With more than 160 million visits in July, the pirate streaming site Cineby was comfortably positioned as one of the most popular unauthorized entertainment platforms on the global internet. Millions of users flocked to its domain catalogs daily to watch copyrighted movies and television series without paying for subscriptions or enduring traditional advertising models. However, that era of massive traffic came to an abrupt halt in August, when the site’s anonymous operators announced a surprise shutdown that left the online piracy community guessing about the underlying causes.
The platform was taken offline in stages over a period of more than a week, with the very last operational domains finally going dark in early September. At first, the site’s administrators remained tight-lipped, offering no public explanation for why they were throwing in the towel after accumulating such immense popularity. Later, in what they designated as a final statement to their user base, the operators revealed that their two primary video providers—which they identified by name as the "Sflix group" and the "1Movies group"—had been dismantled approximately three months earlier, leaving their service unable to fully recover from the crippling infrastructure loss.
Throughout the initial weeks of the closure, no anti-piracy enforcement operation was publicly mentioned in connection with the event. Prominent entertainment industry enforcement groups, including the global umbrella organization known as the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, commonly referred to as ACE, remained silent and did not claim responsibility for Cineby’s sudden demise. That silence, however, has finally been broken following a recent regulatory filing submitted to the United States government.
The MPA Takes Credit for Enforcement Successes
Last week, the Motion Picture Association, widely known as the MPA, submitted its comprehensive annual overview of notorious foreign piracy markets to the Office of the United States Trade Representative, or USTR. Before diving into the extensive catalog of ongoing online threats that continue to plague copyright holders, the prominent Hollywood industry group dedicated a significant portion of its report to highlighting what it regards as highly positive developments achieved since its previous submission.
The sudden and permanent demise of Cineby stands out as a prime example of these positive developments, alongside the operational collapse of the linked embed service known as Videasy. In its official submission document, the organization explicitly links the disappearance of these notorious platforms to concerted anti-piracy pressure.
"On another positive note, 2025 submissions Cineby[.]app and Videasy[.]net have ceased operations following MPA and ACE actions," the MPA writes in its report.
Earlier within the same filing, the MPA elaborates on the takedown of domains associated with Cineby, attributing the outcome to an extensive investigation combined with a multi-region enforcement effort. Following the conclusion of this coordinated pressure, the primary cineby.at domain has been rendered completely nonfunctional, and the Videasy backend service has been knocked permanently offline. The report also touches upon related services, noting that Vidking—which was frequently mentioned alongside the shuttered platforms—remains accessible online, but currently serves no purpose because it has been stripped of all connected source servers.
Notably, the submission document makes no mention of a specific court order or a direct intervention by a national police force, strongly indicating that the operation was executed as part of a private enforcement effort. Further granular details regarding the exact methods used to pressure the operators into submission have not been publicly shared by the Hollywood coalition.
Within the same regulatory filing, the MPA explicitly credits Vietnamese law enforcement agencies with successfully dismantling the massive HiAnime piracy network. According to the disclosures made by the Hollywood group, the HiAnime operation was part of a larger web of infringing infrastructure that also encompassed the Sflix and MyFlixer streaming portals, as well as the Megacloud and Vidcloud hosting services. The severity of this specific law enforcement action was underscored in July when seven suspected operators behind the Vietnamese piracy ring were formally charged.
This law enforcement breakthrough matches the timeline and terminology of the "Sflix group" referenced by Cineby’s operators in their farewell statement. The correlation strongly suggests that Cineby relied heavily on backend infrastructure and video sourcing services provided by the Vietnamese syndicate prior to that network being targeted and dismantled by authorities.
Although the MPA officially classifies Cineby as a defunct entity that is no longer active, the brand itself has proven resilient in the underground streaming ecosystem. Several copycat websites and mirror domains have naturally sprouted up in the wake of the original platform’s collapse, including cineby.vg, which the MPA explicitly acknowledges and lists within its newly published monitoring report.
AnimeFLV Also Succumbs to Enforcement Pressure
Cineby is far from the only high-profile, unexplained shutdown that the Hollywood studio coalition now officially claims as a major strategic victory. The newly submitted USTR document also highlights the complete cessation of operations for AnimeFLV, a massive Spanish-language anime portal that previously commanded more than a billion annual visits, according to traffic estimates cited by the MPA.
"Additionally, the AnimeFLV family of sites included in last year’s submission has ceased operations following MPA and ACE actions. This shutdown represents a significant enforcement success," the MPA writes in its filing.
Back in July, independent industry monitoring reported that AnimeFLV had mysteriously stopped serving video content to its massive user base by mid-June. At the time, the operators maintained absolute silence regarding their motives, and no anti-piracy coalition stepped forward to take credit for the disruption. Today, visiting the primary AnimeFLV domain yields no content whatsoever; instead, the browser connection fails completely and returns a standard HTTP 502 error code. As is customary in the volatile world of online piracy, the vacuum left by the original platform has since been aggressively exploited by various copycat brands attempting to capture its lucrative residual traffic.
The Hydra Keeps Growing Across the Web
Despite celebrating these notable enforcement victories, the MPA’s comprehensive submission makes it clear that the broader piracy ecosystem resembles a mythical hydra, where eliminating one target often leads to the appearance of several others. The group’s overview lists dozens of active streaming portals, hosting providers, and technical services that continue to pose severe economic challenges to the entertainment industry. The coalition stresses that its detailed market overview is not intended to be a fully comprehensive directory of every infringing site on the internet, but rather a spotlight on the most critical strategic threats.
In the previous year’s report, platforms such as Myflixerz, Sflix, Cuevana, and HiAnime were designated as high-priority linking and streaming sites. In the updated 2026 submission, Kisskh has shifted to become the sole priority entry in this category, while Cuevana has been moved down to the regular listing tier. Kisskh, a specialized platform focusing heavily on Asian dramas alongside mainstream Hollywood content, amassed more than 70 million visits on its primary kisskh.is domain during the month of August alone, with the vast majority of its audience originating from India.
The category of so-called "hydra sites," which the MPA formally introduced in its previous annual submission, remains a primary source of concern for content creators and distributors. These pirate portals frequently operate by outsourcing their heavy lifting to third-party Piracy-as-a-Service, or PaaS, infrastructure platforms that supply ready-to-use video players and hosting. A prominent example of this architectural model includes the live sports PaaS network known as Streamed.
According to data compiled by the MPA, the collective group of approximately 30 different sites utilizing the live sports PaaS service Streamed generated an astonishing 463 million visits in July alone, marking a massive surge compared to the 134 million visits recorded just a year earlier.
The report also identifies emerging hydra threats entering the market, including portals such as 1Shows, 1Flex, CineHD, VidBox, and StreamEX. On the underlying PaaS infrastructure side, while prominent former providers like Videasy and MegaCloud have been successfully knocked offline and removed from the active lists, new entrants have quickly emerged to fill the void. The MPA points to VidFast as a prime illustration of this ongoing cycle, reporting that the service is currently utilized by at least 158 distinct pirate websites that collectively pull in approximately 629 million monthly visits.
Within the direct download cyberlocker and video hosting category, Telegram has now climbed to the very top of the MPA’s priority list, while DoodStream has been shifted to the regular inventory. Among other criticisms, the industry group highlights that Telegram’s responsiveness to formal copyright takedown notices is entirely inconsistent, ranging from swift administrative processing in some instances to weeks of complete inaction in others.
"Telegram is a platform of immediate concern," the MPA explicitly states in the filing.
In the specialized hosting category, the submission provides fresh investigative details regarding Netulu, an entity that first appeared in the previous year’s monitoring report. The company was formally incorporated in the state of Delaware during the month of April, and according to the MPA, all copyright-infringing streaming sites previously hosted by Private Layer were transferred directly to Netulu around that time. The Hollywood group notes that U.S.-based investigators are actively following up on emerging leads related to this corporate structure.
The controversial pirate mobile application MovieBox has also secured a returning spot on the enforcement radar. The MPA cites download statistics indicating more than 243 million installations originating exclusively from the Palm Store. However, subsequent independent reports indicate that the application’s distribution counters have already surpassed the 300 million download milestone as rightsholders continue to issue formal warnings to regulatory bodies in the European Union and elsewhere.
The Office of the United States Trade Representative will thoroughly review the MPA’s comprehensive submission, alongside supporting commentary and documentation provided by other industry stakeholders, over the coming months. The USTR’s official and definitive notorious markets list is anticipated to be published early next year.
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