Italian Police Shut Down Cinemagoal Piracy App

Italian financial police announced they carried out more than 100 searches and seizures across the country targeting the Cinemagoal streaming app. The Guardia di Finanza said the app operated continuously, taking access codes from legitimate subscriptions and routing them to unauthorized accounts that delivered content to paying Cinemagoal users.

According to the agency, the service bypassed platform security checks and did not require an IP address connection, complicating tracking efforts. Subscriptions cost between 40 and 130 euros per year and were paid via cryptocurrency or accounts registered under false foreign names.

The Guardia di Finanza initially calculated financial losses to rights holders at roughly 300 million euros and has begun fining the first 1,000 identified subscribers between 154 and 5,000 euros each.

The agency stated it worked with other European authorities to seize servers holding decryption keys and the app's source code. It is not yet known whether the service can resume operations. Earlier enforcement actions cited by the agency include the 2022 closure of Popcorn Time and the September 2025 shutdown of the sports-streaming site Streameast.