MPA Takes Credit for Takedown of Massive Piracy Hub Cineby

Hollywood's chief lobbying group is claiming direct credit for dismantling Cineby, a massive unauthorized streaming portal that accumulated more than 160 million visits in July alone.

In its annual submission on notorious foreign piracy markets delivered to the U.S. Trade Representative, the Motion Picture Association disclosed that its enforcement arm, the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), orchestrated the campaign that knocked Cineby and related video embed tool Videasy offline, as reported by TorrentFreak.

"On another positive note, 2025 submissions Cineby[.]app and Videasy[.]net have ceased operations following MPA and ACE actions," the MPA wrote in its filing to the federal agency, describing the takedown as the result of an "extensive investigation and multi-region enforcement effort."

The disclosure settles lingering questions about Cineby's sudden collapse. The illicit platform began shuttering its operations in August, with its final domains going dark by early September. At the time, operators attributed the closure to upstream supply disruptions, stating that key video feeds from the "Sflix group" and "1Movies group" had failed months earlier, without acknowledging any active legal pressure.

The MPA's strategic disclosure highlights how studio anti-piracy efforts have pivoted toward infrastructure choke points rather than simple domain blocking. As Hollywood Tomorrow notes, targeting shared video backends and embed providers allows rights holders to cripple dozens of consumer-facing pirate fronts in a single coordinated action.

The USTR filing serves as Hollywood's yearly roadmap for international copyright enforcement, listing active digital threats abroad while framing ACE's cross-border operations as vital protection for studio intellectual property.