The motion picture industry’s chief anti-piracy arm has officially claimed responsibility for the sudden and mysterious disappearances of several massive pirate streaming portals, shedding light on enforcement efforts that caught the digital underground by surprise earlier this year.
For months, the digital piracy community had been left guessing following the sudden collapse of platforms like Cineby and AnimeFLV. Cineby, which pulled in a staggering 160 million visits in July, stunned its massive user base when its operators announced a surprise shutdown in August. The site was taken offline in stages over more than a week, with its final domains going dark by early September. At the time, the operators offered a cryptic explanation, claiming that their two primary video providers—which they identified as the “Sflix group” and the “1Movies group”—had gone under roughly three months prior, leaving the service unable to fully recover.
Notably absent from the operators’ farewell statements was any mention of law enforcement or anti-piracy actions. Traditional enforcement bodies, including the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), maintained a tactical silence regarding the platform’s demise, leading many to believe the site had succumbed purely to internal infrastructural or financial failures.
That narrative changed drastically when the Motion Picture Association (MPA) submitted its annual overview of notorious foreign piracy markets to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR). In the newly released filing, Hollywood’s primary advocacy and enforcement group highlighted what it views as significant positive developments since its previous submission, placing the destruction of Cineby and its associated embed service, Videasy, front and center.
“On another positive note, 2025 submissions Cineby[.]app and Videasy[.]net have ceased operations following MPA and ACE actions,” the MPA wrote in the report.
Earlier sections of the filing elaborate on the takedown, attributing the disappearance of Cineby-related domains to an “extensive investigation and multi-region enforcement effort.” As a direct result of these concerted actions, the main cineby.at domain is now nonfunctional, and Videasy has been completely neutralized. While a parallel service, Vidking, remains accessible, the MPA noted that it currently operates with “no connected source servers,” effectively rendering it useless for streaming.
The submission conspicuously omitted references to specific courts or police forces, suggesting the campaign relied heavily on private enforcement mechanisms, pressure tactics, and behind-the-scenes legal maneuvering. However, the report did credit Vietnamese law enforcement with dismantling the HiAnime piracy network, a sprawling operation that the MPA says also encompassed the Sflix/MyFlixer and Megacloud/Vidcloud ecosystems. Seven suspected operators tied to that ring were formally charged in July. This law enforcement action directly aligns with the “Sflix group” referenced in Cineby’s final shutdown note, strongly implying that Cineby had relied heavily on infrastructure provided by the now-dusted Vietnamese syndicate.
Despite the MPA listing Cineby as completely inactive, the brand has proven resilient in the underground, with several copycat domains quickly emerging in the wake of the vacuum, including cineby.vg, which the MPA explicitly acknowledged in its regulatory filing.
Cineby was not the only high-profile casualty claimed by the Hollywood group in its latest report. The MPA also took formal credit for the sudden collapse of AnimeFLV, a massive Spanish-language anime portal that previously commanded more than a billion annual visits. In mid-June, users noticed that the site had abruptly stopped serving video. Much like the Cineby situation, the operators remained silent, and no enforcement agency stepped forward to claim responsibility at the time, leaving the domain to eventually devolve into an HTTP 502 error page.
“Additionally, the AnimeFLV family of sites included in last year’s submission has shut down following MPA and ACE actions. This shutdown represents a significant enforcement success,” the MPA stated, noting that copycat portals have similarly attempted to capture the orphaned traffic.
Even as the MPA celebrated these victories, the newly filed regulatory document underscores the relentless nature of modern digital piracy, comparing the illicit ecosystem to a mythological hydra that grows new heads faster than old ones can be severed. The group’s comprehensive overview outlines dozens of active sites and backend services that continue to plague copyright holders on a global scale.
Last year, platforms like Myflixerz/Sflix, Cuevana, and HiAnime occupied the top tier of priority linking and streaming sites. In the 2026 submission, Kisskh has emerged as the sole priority entry in that category, with Cuevana dropping down to the regular monitoring list. Kisskh, which specializes in Asian dramas alongside mainstream Hollywood content, drew over 70 million visits in August alone on its kisskh.is domain, drawing the bulk of its massive traffic from users in India.
The "hydra sites" category—a term introduced by the MPA to describe pirate portals that decentralize their operations by relying on third-party Piracy-as-a-Service (PaaS) platforms for video delivery—remains a core operational challenge. This ecosystem includes live sports PaaS networks like Streamed. According to the MPA’s tracking data, roughly 30 individual pirate sites utilizing the Streamed live sports PaaS accumulated an astonishing 463 million visits in July, marking a massive surge from the 134 million visits recorded a year prior.
Emerging hydra threats highlighted in the report include portals such as 1Shows/1Flex, CineHD/VidBox, and StreamEX. On the infrastructure side, while services like Videasy and MegaCloud were successfully grounded, new players have rapidly filled the void. The MPA pointed to VidFast as a prominent newcomer, noting that the PaaS platform is currently utilized by at least 158 distinct pirate sites, which collectively pull in roughly 629 million monthly visits.
Within the cyberlocker and direct video hosting category, Telegram has vaulted to the top of the priority list, superseding other platforms. The MPA expressed deep frustration with the messaging application’s handling of intellectual property complaints, stating that Telegram’s response times to formal takedown notices vary wildly from swift processing to weeks of outright inaction.
“Telegram is a platform of immediate concern,” the MPA emphasized in the filing.
The regulatory submission also provided fresh insights into Netulu, a hosting entity that first appeared on the MPA’s radar last year. According to the report, the company was officially incorporated in Delaware in April, coinciding with a strategic pivot that saw numerous pirate sites previously hosted by Private Layer transferred directly to Netulu’s network. The MPA noted that U.S.-based investigators are actively pursuing leads related to the corporate restructuring.
Meanwhile, the controversial mobile application MovieBox returned to the MPA’s target list. While the group cited download figures exceeding 243 million from the Palm Store alone, independent metrics indicate that the app’s distribution numbers have already cleared the 300-million milestone.
The U.S. Trade Representative will review the MPA’s extensive submission over the coming months, alongside comments and data provided by other industry stakeholders, before publishing its official Notorious Markets list early next year.
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