Imagebam has gone from being largely off the radar to number 680 ranked site for daily visits.You can blame many things but posting the best of the best - full HD sets - would be the main reason for their rise to the top.
I'd imagine their eating into some heavy hitters bottom line profits
Hence the lawsuit thats brought them undone - they were linked to Steadfast
The 3 named - Cloudflare , Hivelocity Ventures Corporation , Steadfast Networks
These 3 dont have DMCA protection so they can be made to co-operate
https://torrentfreak.com/images/cloudpartial.pdf
Basically any site thats had dealing with the 3 American firms named in the law suit is dead in the water because their happy to hand over details to the courts to save their own hides.
Everything that occurs on an imagehost is filtered through their servers
If their owners are American they close rather than face the courts
Presumably to keep previous profits intact.
Cloudflare, Inc. is a U.S. company that provides a content delivery network, Internet security services and distributed domain name server services, sitting between the visitor and the Cloudflare user's hosting provider, acting as a reverse proxy for websites.
Cloudflare was ranked 7th among the top 50 Bad Hosts by HostExploit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloudf..._controversies
Timeline - has been bubbling away for quite a few years
2017
Cloudflare Fails to Limit Scope of Piracy Lawsuit
By Ernesto on June 10, 2017
Contains PDF which contains the law suit document - names the 3 companies being sued
https://torrentfreak.com/cloudflare-...awsuit-170610/
2016
Hosting Companies Dragged into Piracy Lawsuit Alongside Cloudflare
By Andy on November 26, 2016
https://torrentfreak.com/hosting-com...dflare-161126/
Cloudflare: We Can’t Shut Down Pirate Sites
By Ernesto on September 27, 2016
https://torrentfreak.com/cloudflare-...-sites-160927/
Cloudflare Faces Lawsuit For Assisting Pirate Sites
By Ernesto on August 23, 2016
https://torrentfreak.com/cloudflare-...-sites-160823/
2015
Cloudflare: We’re Not Aiding and Abetting Piracy
By Ernesto on May 30, 2015
https://torrentfreak.com/tag/cloudflare/
RIAA Drags CloudFlare into Piracy Lawsuit, Scolds LeaseWeb
By Ernesto on May 27, 2015
https://torrentfreak.com/riaa-drags-...aseweb-150527/