Mid-February, the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) announced that MyCima, one of the largest pirate streaming sites in the Middle East, had been shut down.
Reportedly operated from Alexandria and offering 12,000 movies and 26,000 TV series, MyCima enjoyed around 50 million visits per month.
Following an ACE referral, Egyptian authorities took action to shut the site down. MyCima’s most popular domain – myciiima.autos – went offline along with around 70 others.
ACE thanked Egypt’s Prime Minister and the Ministry of Internal Affairs for protecting intellectual property, while two new members of the ACE coalition – MENA-based OSN and MBC Group – were acknowledged for their work in shutting MyCima down.
Not Quite Dead Yet: MyCima Sewn Back Together
According to Egyptian mythology, Osiris was a much-loved king who was killed by Seth, his jealous brother, who chopped him up and scattered the 14 pieces all over Egypt. MyCima had many more pieces, notably around 70 domains. While 13 pieces of Osiris were found and sewn back together, one was never found. An important piece of MyCima was overlooked too.
In January 2023, myciiima.autos alone received more than 43.3m visits, making it the 10th most-visited domain in Egypt. Many other domains redirected in and out, among them mycimaa.tv. Domains redirecting to mycimaa.tv were numerous too – myciiima.bond, myciiima.boats, myciiima.makeup and myciiima.monster, among others.
At some point in January, Myciiima.autos redirected to mycimaa.tv and on February 2, 2023, myciiima.autos was updated and fell out of use. Also on February 2, a new domain was registered and connected to many existing domains. Wecima.tube appears to be MyCima’s new home. Or one of them at least
MyCima? No. Wecima? Yeah
Given these and other connections not detailed here, there seems little doubt that WeCima is just MyCima with a new name and a new domain.
The site was already pretty glossy, so a new coat of paint probably wasn’t needed. That being said, absolutely no effort has been made to portray this as a new platform.
It’s unclear why the site’s operators are still in business, especially given the big shutdown announcements in February that received regional and international attention. The involvement of OSN and what this resurrection means for them is made especially clear on WeCima’s front page.
Site Changes Pirated Content Policy
On WeCima’s homepage, under the top row of movie and TV show cover images, is some Arabic text. It’s been edited at least once, maybe twice, over the past week or so. The image below shows the notice in English, as it appeared a few days ago.
Taken at face value, this clearly suggests that content owned by TV network OSN has been removed. That could be for any number of reasons, but the most obvious is that MyCima/WeCima are under the impression that removal either removes or reduces the risk of being targeted again.
Viewed from a different perspective, the site might be more concerned about local companies’ content than content owned by companies located overseas. A little more weight is given to that theory with a more recent update to the site’s main page.
It appears that while OSN content still won’t feature on the site, the same now holds true for all local content. This stated position is a far cry from the site being completely closed down and is almost certainly a big diversion from what the rest of the ACE coalition thought would happen.
But Will it Last?
After being chopped into pieces by Seth and sewn back together by Isis, Osiris lived for just a single day. His legacy, a son he conceived despite lacking a crucial body part, lived on. A single domain allowed WeCima to live on but the site is taking no chances.
Since wecima.tube was registered on February 2, 2023, the registrations have barely stopped. Domains including weciima.motorcycles and weciima.makeup are just two examples from a list of several dozen domains that are either active already and pointing at WeCima, or waiting for the right moment to do so.
Other resurrections may be happening elsewhere in Egypt too.
