Kickass Torrentfreak
Nhyiraba Valentin
KickassTorrents (commonly abbreviated KAT) was a website that provided a directory for torrent files and magnet links to facilitate peer-to-peer file sharing using the BitTorrent protocol. It was founded in 2008 and by November 2014, KAT became the most visited BitTorrent directory in the world, overtaking The Pirate Bay, according to the site's Alexa ranking.[1] KAT went offline on 20 July 2016 when the domain was seized by the U.S. government. The site's proxy servers were shut down by its staff at the same time.[2]
KAT was initially launched in November 2008 at the domain name kickasstorrents.com. In April 2011, it moved to a Philippine domain kat.ph after a series of domain name seizures by the US Department of Justice against Demonoid and Torrentz.[4] The site later moved across several different domains, which the operators planned to do every six months, including ka.tt, kickass.to, kickass.so, kickasstorrents.im and kat.cr.[5]
On 28 February 2013, Internet service providers (ISPs) in the United Kingdom were ordered by the High Court in London to block access to KickassTorrents, along with two other torrent sites. Judge Richard Arnold ruled that the site's design contributed to copyright infringement.[8][9] On 14 June, the domain name was changed to Tonga domain name kickass.to as a part of the site's regular domain change.[10]
Later on 23 June, KAT was delisted from Google at the request of the MPAA.[11] In late August 2013, KAT was blocked by Belgian ISPs.[12] In January 2014, several Irish ISPs started blocking KAT,[13] and in February, Twitter started blocking links to KAT, although this was stopped after a few days.[14] In June 2014, KAT was blocked in Malaysia by the Communications and Multimedia Commission for violating copyright law.[15]
In December 2014, the site moved to the Somalia domain name kickass.so, reportedly as a result of site's regular domain change.[16][17] On 9 February 2015, kickass.so was listed as "banned" on Whois, causing the site to go offline. Later that day, the site reverted to its former domain name kickass.to.[18] On 14 February 2015, it was found that messages mentioning "kickass.to" were blocked on Steam chat, but "kickass.so" and other popular torrent websites were not blocked, only flagged as "potentially malicious".[19]
On 23 April 2015, the site moved to the Isle of Man-based domain kickasstorrents.im[20] but was quickly taken down later that day and on 24 April it was moved to the Costa Rica based domain name kat.cr.[21] By July 2015, the kat.cr address had been removed from Google Search's results. After the removal, the top Google search result for KAT in many locations pointed to a fake KAT site that prompted visitors to download malware.[22]
In October 2015, Portugal bypassed its courts by making a voluntary agreement between ISPs, rightsholders and the Ministry of Culture to block access to KAT and most of the other popular BitTorrent websites.[23] The website had similarly been banned in India for copyright violations during that period.[24] At the same time, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox blocked access to KAT because of security concerns with some of the ads pointing to malware.[25] In April 2016, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox blocked KAT due to phishing concerns.[26] Both blocks were later removed after KAT dealt with the concerns.
Vaulin was arrested after investigators cross-referenced an IP address he used for an iTunes transaction with an IP address used to log into KAT's Facebook page. The FBI also posed as an advertiser and obtained details of a bank account associated with the site.[30] The investigation was led by special agent Jared Der-Yeghiayan.[34]
The criminal complaint, filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois by Homeland Security Investigations, said that it was in possession of full copies of KAT's hard drives, including its email server. The investigation suggested that KAT made over $12 million per year in advertising revenue.[35]
In late August 2016, the Department of Justice followed the complaint with a full grand jury indictment of Vaulin and two other defendants, Ievgen Kutsenko and Oleksandr Radostin; while Vaulin was still being held in Polish prison.[36] Vaulin has both a Polish and US legal representation Ira Rothken as his lawyers to handle the allegations.[37][38] In November 2016, a Polish appeals court refused to allow bail for Vaulin, stating the evidence provided by the US is sufficient to keep him in prison.[39]
The case of Artem Vaulin prosecution was officially put on hold after Vaulin "disappeared" from Poland. His bail of $108,000 was forfeited. His legal team was reported to have withdrawn from the case after they lost contact with Vaulin.[40]
One of the most-visited torrenting websites on the Internet, Kickass.so has lost access to its Somalian domain name and is currently unavailable. Due to its millions of visitors per day, the site has become a target for copyright holders who want to see it be taken offline.
While the site is currently down, it is expected that it will move to a new domain name sometime later today. The Kickass team informed Torrent Freak (www.torrentfreak.com) that they will be reverting back to their older domain, kickass.to.
This news comes shortly after the fall of The Pirate Bay, a similar torrent-hosting website. However, The Pirate Bay actually had their servers and computers seized by Swedish police, and in this case all KickassTorrents has to do is move everything to a new domain name.
In this digital age of the Internet, piracy will always be an option for those who seek it out. Concerning the two power players, KickassTorrents and The Pirate Bay, neither will die while the other survives.
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Kickass Torrents, one of the largest torrent sites, was shut down by Philippine officials after they received complaints from the Philippine Association of the Recording Industry. While the domain seizure stopped the site briefly, multiple proxy sites were running as of Friday.
Kickass Torrents, operating under the domain kat.ph, was seized on Thursday, reports TorrentFreak. The torrent site is the second-largest such site behind The Pirate Bay. According to the dotPH, the domain registry of the Philippines, a temporary restraining order was filed against Kickass Torrents by the Philippine Intellectual Property Office. The order was meant to suspend the domain kat.ph for 72 hours.
Despite the seizure of kat.ph, Kickass Torrents is alive and kicking elsewhere, having quickly jumped to a different domain. Visitors going to kickass.to will find a thriving Kickass Torrents. This is the second high-profile domain seizure in June; earlier in the month Movie2k was shut down. The streaming-movie portal was shut down after the Motion Picture Association of America, or MPAA, successfully had Movie2k blocked by top UK Internet Service Providers. Much like Kickass Torrents, Movie2k quickly evolved, morphing to Movie4k and resuming services.
Kickass Torrents was resuscitated back to life today after more than four months since its shut down by officials on the changes of copyright infringement". But the new website address it was restored to this morning is inaccessible yet again.
According to the torrentfreak, crew members of the torrent website assembled back stage to get the community part of the site up and running again soon after it was shut down by the authorities. Katcr.co was launched as a forum for discussions among the community, and there was a slight hint that the website could come back sometime later.Also Read: File-sharing site Megaupload to relaunch in 2017, says founder Kim Dotcom
It reported that the new site was functional at a similar domain. But soon after the site came back to life, its new link showed a 404 error and the community page went under construction. A "403 Forbidden" message flashes on the database links for downloading torrents.
"Servers Load have been affected, there are other few sources of this issue, its not just one. We are working on fix this as soon as possible .. one thing is for sure, we are not going anywhere, even as much these behind this acts want us to" the page reads. The website may not be facing technical issues, as page talks about someone who is behind the act of pulling down the page. It further says "Cowards always choose the shadows to commit their acts, and I do personally hope they know how to pray, they will need it."
One of the world's biggest torrent database, Kickass Torrents was shut down after Artem Vaulin, the alleged owner of Kickass Torrents, was arrested on the charges of illegally distributing copied films, music and other content worth over $1 billion. Soon afterwards, Department of Telecommunications of India warned users that accessing torrent sites could attract a three year jail term and a penalty of Rs 3 lakh. Also Read: Legion hackers: Who are they and how they are hacking Indian Twitter celebsPublished By: AtMigration Published On: Dec 17, 2016--- ENDS ---
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