Copyright holders rejoice! The largest torrent site on earth has been taken down by the US government a few days back. After posing as an advertiser they managed to trace the money back to a Ukrainian guy, Artem Vaulin. It's quite the story really, check out the full article here.

What do you think is going to happen now? Is this a hard blow to piracy or are most people just going to use another site? Will there always be another site to take the lead? Discuss.

 

[Lacius]

Does anyone actually still use public torrent sites anymore cause I dropped them about 12 years ago! Get with the times guys if you do before its too late and you cant join anywhere.

To use public torrents without a VPN is to invite copyright infringement letters. I usually check for Mega links first.

 

[Justinde75]

I heard that there is an alternative already.

 

[Jay Clay]

well, of course this will be like a ¨yeah we are fighting piracy¨but really the only reason why the U.S. shut down kat is because of the millions of dollar Artem Vaulin got in a few months, they of course already know kat will be back in another way, piracy always do that.

 

[retrofan_k]

Who cares, as its just another public torrent site. Been using private trackers for a while now, VPN's and SSl usenet.

 

[the_randomizer]

To use public torrents without a VPN is to invite copyright infringement letters. I usually check for Mega links first.

Well, problem is most VPNs cost money, and most people who pirate typically try to avoid spending money at all

 

[Mikemk]

Well, problem is most VPNs cost money, and most people who pirate typically try to avoid spending money at all

PIA $40/year. Cheaper than a flashcart

 

[Ritsuki]

“Records provided by Apple showed that [email protected] conducted an iTunes transaction using IP Address 109.86.226.203 on or about July 31, 2015. The same IP Address was used on the same day to login into the KAT Facebook,” the complaint reads."

WOW just WOW
this is actually considered evidence?
1st of all why would a "pirate" need to purchase anything from itunes? it makes no sense in the context of their (EXTREMELY WEAK) case
second of all anyone could have stolen this persons itunes password (especially $up3r 133t h4x0r$ who run torrenting sites)considering apples extremely poor security, and their track record
an IP address is NOT a person , weak evidence

Well, actually I heard that they worked with Apple to get some private infos. So they pretty much managed to find his identity, and from there you can easily link the facts

 

[shaunj66]

I dread to think how much money they've wasted in this game of whackamole.

 

[Dust2dust]

Never liked torrents in the first place, so no big loss for me. Torrents have two major drawbacks: first, if nobody is willing to seed, the whole system crumbles. Second, lack of privacy. You're broadcasting your IP address as a pirate. Sure, a vpn solves that, but if I have to pay for something, I'd rather pay for a premium usenet provider. I've been subscribing for so many years, and never considered stopping. Fast download speed, no uploading if you don't want to, and the stuff posted can be available for up to seven years, now. Try that with a torrent.

 

[Ritsuki]

God, I just read the article on TorrentFreak... Homeland Security? My goodness, they were arresting a hacker maybe, a pirate, but I doubt the guy was a threat for US homeland security... The guy wasn't even on US territory and they want him to be extradited in the US? The guy isn't even American nor lives in the US

 

[Chrisssj2]

Anyone know a decent replacement for the time being?

 

[Mikemk]

Anyone know a decent replacement for the time being?

Not the place to ask. It's going to be chaos without an iso site though.

 

[Strahssis]

I am sure he will not be punished, since he didn't do anything illegal himself. He just had a torrent file database, which is completely legal.
The only illegal part about this is the users uploading movies, games, music, ... by torrents. Downloading is completely legal and owning a torrent aswell.
I am sure he made lots of money with Kickass Torrents, so he will be able to get a good lawyer to protect him, which will be easy, since he didn't do anything illegal.

Note: I am sure about all of this in Dutch law, but I am not sure about this in American law.

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Anyone know a decent replacement for the time being?

You can use http://torrentz.eu/ for searching torrents and use different servers to download from. It's really simple, you should check it out.

 

[zoogie]

God, I just read the article on TorrentFreak... Homeland Security? My goodness, they were arresting a hacker maybe, a pirate, but I doubt the guy was a threat for US homeland security... The guy wasn't even on US territory and they want him to be extradited in the US? The guy isn't even American nor lives in the US

He had a server in Chicago.

 

[Jayro]

That iso hunt site already has a mirror for kat on there, its been cloned.

 

[RemixDeluxe]

This is why you cant take torrenting for granted, I learned this the day Megaupload when down. Felt like just yesterday too.

 

[codezer0]

Seeing people proclaim how awesome it is to be able to access private tracker sites seem to casually forget that not everyone even knows or can access such a site.

public torrent sites still serve a purpose. And it blows ass to see another that's served the community well get arbitrarily shutdown because of butt-hurt from corporations with lobbying power.

 

[CitizenSnips]

This isn't gonna kill off piracy, nice try government and DMCA-loving sycophants

As for torrents, I haven't downloaded one in a long time for a couple of reasons, one, I use Comcast (which is literally the only fast ISP in my area, all others are far slower, like, a lot slower), I get 50 mbps downloads, sure, but they have a cap of about 400 GB a month. That, and I don't trust torrents, given that they can contain malware, viruses, like, I don't even know if the torrent I'm getting will screw up my OS.

you're lucky, im stuck with 65gb/month (15gb during the day and 50gb between 2-8am) and 2-20mbps down, but i still manage to download torrents, just not huge games (like gta v)

 

[DavidRO99]

Well, after Megaupload died, we got alternatives, so I guess we'll be fine in the long run. Right now through it'll get a bit annoying to find a massive public tracker like that, although The Penguin Bar still works, it has been very unstable too.

Basically, we'll get an alternative soon and people will move to it, it's a hard blow, but it's not a big deal IMO.

There is some ISOhunt replica that actually works pretty well

 

[Deleted User]

There is still PirateBay, it up and running