Series.ly was once one of Spain’s best-known pirate link sites. The original operation dropped its piracy links in late 2014. In 2021, the domain was bought at auction by a new team, which says it isn’t part of the original one.

“The current Series.ly is a separate project from the one that existed until 2015. We bought the domain at an auction in 2021 and we’re not part of the original team,” the operator tells TorrentFreak (translated).

According to the operator, the new team liked the old site and wanted to bring back that experience. There was plenty of debate internally about whether to go ahead, especially because of what the original creators went through. The operator describes their legal ordeal as “deeply unfair” (translated).

The new Series.ly, which requires a login to access, became reasonably popular. The site ranked among the 35,000 most-visited sites worldwide earlier this year, with nearly 90% of its traffic coming from Spain.

That popularity didn’t go unnoticed by rightsholders, which haven’t given up on shutting it down yet. In May, film and TV producers’ group EGEDA filed a complaint with the Second Section of Spain’s Intellectual Property Commission, which falls under the Ministry of Culture, aiming to shut the site down.

The Commission’s investigator checked a sample of 42 of the 110 titles that were listed in the complaint. Of these, 35 could be streamed or downloaded from Series.ly at the time. The Commission also ordered the site to remove the infringing content in July, but it says Series.ly never responded.

From Google to a Libyan Registrar

At the end of July, the Commission sanctioned a series of anti-piracy measures against the site, targeting third-party intermediaries. For example, the resolution requires Google and Bing to remove the site from their search results, while ISPs with a market share of more than 1% must block the domain name.

The ISPs are also urged to redirect visitors to a government page. This informs users that the Commission blocked the domain “for having illegally facilitated access to content protected by intellectual property rights” (translated).

The order also lists Cloudflare and Ukrainian hosting company Virtual Systems, whose Kyiv data centers were hit by Russian missile strikes last month, as well as Series.ly’s domain registrar, Libyan Spider Network. These measures apply to the current domain name, as well as new ones that the operator may use for the same purpose.

The Commission’s resolution needs court approval before it can be enforced. This came on September 28, when a judge at the Central Court of First Instance in Madrid concluded that the measures were proportionate, approving them as requested.

The Libyan Registrar Acts

Little more than a week later, at least one intermediary appears to have taken action. Earlier this week, Series.ly unexpectedly lost its domain name after the domain registrar, Libyan Spider, stepped in.

WHOIS records show that series.ly was placed on ‘clientHold’, a status set by the registrar to take a domain offline. This pulls the domain from the .ly zone, which means that Series.ly no longer resolves.

Libyan Spider hasn’t commented publicly, but the Series.ly operator says the notice cited the Spanish order. It reached them through the auction house that sold them the domain, which acts as a reseller for the registrar.

“The reason they gave us was a Spanish copyright resolution and a court order authorizing suspension measures against the domain,” the operator tells TorrentFreak (translated).

It is not clear whether the other intermediaries have taken action yet, but the court order remains valid.

The site didn’t wait for the domain to come back. Series.ly’s operator confirmed to TorrentFreak that it swiftly switched to a new brand, Cinubo, which runs on a freshly registered .com domain.

No Plans to Appeal

The operator says it didn’t see the warnings before the domain was suspended. An EGEDA email it later found was sent to support@series.ly, while the address listed on the site is soporte@series.ly.

The registrar’s heads-up also went unnoticed.

“Our provider forwarded the notice to us quickly, but it went to an account we didn’t check regularly, which also received the catch-all mail for series.ly, meaning messages sent to any address on the domain. We didn’t see those notices in time,” the operator says (translated).

According to the operator, Series.ly is a non-profit that hasn’t generated any revenue since it launched. The site doesn’t host any video files, and the links to other services are added by the community, he explains.

“Our position is that complaints about those video files should be directed at the services that host or distribute them,” the operator says (translated).

“We think it’s disproportionate that a complaint about content hosted by third parties ends up getting our entire domain suspended, including email and the personal library features.”

For now, the operator doesn’t plan to appeal the Spanish order. The company behind the project is based in Nevis, which raises questions about the reach of the Spanish order, the operator argues.

“We question whether a procedure handled in Spain justifies suspending our domain worldwide, which also affects email and services that have nothing to do with the works in question,” the operator notes (translated).

This may not be the end of it though. The Spanish order also covers new domain names that are used for the same purpose, which could include the new Cinubo one. In addition, other intermediaries may take action as well.

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Update October 9, 2026: A few days after it was suspended, the series.ly domain appears to be back under the control of its owner. The operator informs us that the registrar lifted the suspension, but stressed that the domain can no longer be used to link to copyright-infringing content.

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A copy of the Commission’s resolution is available here (pdf). The court’s authorization can be found here (pdf). The Series.ly operator’s answers were provided in Spanish. The quotes in this article were translated by TorrentFreak.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.