With more than 160 million visits in July, Cineby had firmly established itself as one of the most popular unauthorized streaming sites on the internet. Offering a vast catalog of movies and television shows, the platform commanded massive global traffic and operated with apparent impunity. That dynamic shifted dramatically in August, when the site’s operators announced a surprise shutdown that caught the digital piracy tracking community off guard. The platform was taken offline in stages over a period of more than a week, with its final remaining domains going dark in the early days of September, marking the end of a major player in the illicit streaming ecosystem.
At the time of the closure, the operators offered very little explanation as to why they were throwing in the towel. In a final parting statement, however, they shed some light on their operational struggles, noting that their two primary video providers—which they identified as the "Sflix group" and the "1Movies group"—had been taken down roughly three months earlier. According to the operators, Cineby’s infrastructure never fully recovered from that severe upstream blow, leaving the site unsustainable.
Notably, no formal anti-piracy enforcement operation was mentioned in those initial farewell messages, and traditional enforcement coalitions, including the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), remained silent on the matter. That silence has now been broken, revealing the hidden hand behind the platform’s sudden demise.
The MPA Takes Credit
Last week, the Motion Picture Association (MPA) submitted its annual overview of notorious foreign piracy markets to the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). Before diving into the catalog of ongoing and emerging threats that continue to plague the entertainment industry, the Hollywood-backed group highlighted what it considers to be major positive developments since its previous submission.
Among the chief victories cited in the filing is the complete demise of Cineby, alongside the closure of the tightly linked embedded video service known as Videasy. In its official report, the MPA explicitly links these developments to coordinated industry pressure, writing that "2025 submissions Cineby[.]app and Videasy[.]net have ceased operations following MPA and ACE actions."
Earlier sections of the filing elaborate on the takedown of Cineby-associated domains, describing the outcome as the result of an extensive investigation and a multi-region enforcement effort. Following this coordinated push, the primary cineby.at domain has been rendered completely nonfunctional, and Videasy has been driven entirely offline. The MPA report also notes that Vidking, a similar service mentioned alongside them, remains accessible but currently operates with no connected source servers, effectively neutralizing its utility for unauthorized streaming networks.
While the filing does not explicitly name a specific court or state police force—suggesting a sophisticated private enforcement effort blending legal pressure, domain seizures, and technical disruption—it provides illuminating context elsewhere. In the same document, the MPA credits Vietnamese law enforcement with successfully dismantling the HiAnime piracy network. According to the MPA, that sprawling criminal ring also encompassed the Sflix and MyFlixer platforms, as well as the Megacloud and Vidcloud hosting infrastructure. Seven suspected operators linked to that network were formally charged in July.
This law enforcement action in Southeast Asia aligns seamlessly with the "Sflix group" reference made by Cineby’s operators in their shutdown statement. It strongly suggests that Cineby relied heavily on backend infrastructure provided by the Vietnamese piracy ring, making the police raids a fatal blow to Cineby’s operations.
Although the MPA classifies Cineby as entirely inactive, the brand has proven resilient in the underground streaming world, with several copycat sites quickly springing up in its wake. Among them is cineby.vg, a clone domain specifically acknowledged by the MPA in its comprehensive report.
AnimeFLV Too
Cineby is not the only high-profile, unexplained shutdown that the MPA is now claiming as a major victory. The organization’s latest submission also takes credit for the demise of AnimeFLV, a massive Spanish-language anime portal that previously pulled in more than a billion annual visits, according to MPA data.
"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 writes in the filing.
Back in July, reports surfaced indicating that AnimeFLV had mysteriously stopped serving video content to its massive user base in mid-June. At the time, the operators maintained absolute silence, and no major anti-piracy coalition stepped forward to claim responsibility for the disruption. Today, the primary AnimeFLV domain fails to load any content, returning instead a standard HTTP 502 error code indicating a gateway failure. True to the nature of modern web piracy, opportunistic copycat operators have attempted to capture the abandoned traffic by launching unauthorized clones under similar names.
The Hydra Keeps Growing
Despite celebrating these high-profile scalps, the MPA’s submission makes it clear that the global piracy landscape resembles a hydra, with new threats constantly replacing severed heads. The group emphasizes that its overview is not intended to be a comprehensive catalog of every single infraction, but rather a spotlight on key industry challenges.
In last year’s report, platforms like Myflixerz/Sflix, Cuevana, and HiAnime occupied the top tier as priority linking and streaming sites. In the new filing, Kisskh has emerged as the sole priority entry in that category, while Cuevana has been demoted to the regular listing. Kisskh, which specializes in Asian dramas alongside mainstream Hollywood content, drew more than 70 million visits to its kisskh.is domain in August alone, with the vast majority of its audience originating from India.
The "hydra sites" phenomenon—a structural model where frontend portals rely entirely on third-party Piracy-as-a-Service (PaaS) backends for their video delivery—remains a profound concern for rights holders. This architecture includes sports-focused PaaS operations like Streamed. According to the MPA’s figures, roughly 30 individual sites utilizing the Streamed live sports PaaS accumulated an astonishing 463 million visits in July, marking a dramatic surge from the 134 million visits recorded just 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 have been successfully knocked offline, new market entrants have quickly filled the vacuum. VidFast, for instance, is reportedly utilized by at least 158 distinct pirate sites that command a combined total of 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. DoodStream, which previously held a priority ranking, has been moved to the general list. The MPA raised serious concerns regarding Telegram’s cooperation with copyright holders, noting that the messaging platform’s response times to formal takedown notices are erratic, ranging from reasonably swift processing to weeks of complete inaction.
"Telegram is a platform of immediate concern," the MPA explicitly states in the report.
The filing also sheds light on ongoing investigations into web hosting providers. The MPA provides new details concerning Netulu, a company incorporated in Delaware in April. According to the submission, around the time of its incorporation, all pirate websites previously hosted by Private Layer were abruptly transferred to Netulu. The MPA notes that U.S.-based investigators are actively following investigative leads stemming from this corporate pivot.
Meanwhile, the controversial pirate application MovieBox has returned to the MPA’s radar. The organization cites more than 243 million downloads of the app from the Palm Store alone, though industry monitoring indicates that the platform’s download counter has already surpassed the 300 million mark.
The U.S. Trade Representative will review the MPA’s comprehensive submission alongside extensive feedback submitted by other global stakeholders over the coming months. The official USTR notorious markets report is slated for publication early next year, where government officials will evaluate the state of global intellectual property protection and determine which foreign entities warrant diplomatic or economic pressure.
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