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.

 

[Jayro]

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

They came back as MEGA.

 

[Xanthe]

Kickass had hardly torrents that actually worked anyway. So good riddance.

I would have to strongly disagree with this. It was my favorite torrenting site.

i didnt know torrents were still that popular, cool story

Fastest way to download so far

At least it wasnt megaupload, oh wait

That's coming back very soon

 

[RemixDeluxe]

They came back as MEGA.

Didnt they come back worse though? It definitely hasnt been the same since the takedown. Why else would people migrate to Kickass. (which I hope doesnt share the same fate.)

 

[Deleted User]

government are like monkeys , if they don't like something they scream and do shiz

Edit: KAT is available in the Deep Web

 

[Bladexdsl]

just when i thought i couldn't hate appl$ any more. i hate them even more now!
http://www.news.com.au/technology/o...r/news-story/b967bd9530e312cf8dbbfcb7cfe53deb

 

[Deleted User]

DAMN IT!!!!!!! even SOLAR MOVIE is down, WTF IS WRONG WITH THE GOVERNMENT?????

 

[Bladexdsl]

it's back

just add .website to the end of KAT in browser

 

[Deleted User]

**** THE GOVERNMENT!
**** THE GOVERNMENT!
**** THE GOVERNMENT!

 

[mashers]

Damn, this is where I download TV shows before they air in the UK

 

[retrofan_k]

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.

Been using usenet for 15 years and it's not the same as it used to be. A lot of spam posts, viruses and junk are posted in groups. Also, finding a decent NNTP server can be chore sometimes since a lot is taken down with DMCA notices, so the retention like you say with 7 years is not always the case with some stuff. Giganews provider used to be the best, yet their retention ratio is not like it was back in the day. Switched to Astraweb and that was great, yet became shit.

An example of that was recently this week when I downloaded Coinops 8 using Astraweb, as practically all the rars were corrupted. Switched to news demon server and all were fine.

Nowadays Dutch servers are better and hold better retention and posts are not always deleted due to their copyright laws.

 

[Smoker1]

Here is something I dont get:
The Film Industry get BILLIONS and they are so pissed about some People sharing???? But yet, when I was in Iraq twice, (More than likely still goes on and has been for Decades), you go into a Store run by a Local National, you can find Pirated Movies on DVDs. A lot of them are CAMRips, TS, HDTS, and if lucky, the Screener/HDTC/R5 Copies. All what the Military says is, when you go through Customs, you can only have 1 Copy of any Movies/TV Shows. Hell I got Star Trek Voyager Complete Series over there. I could tell it was Pirated. Where else would you see DVD9 on a Disk??????? LOL. Couple Episodes in the 1st Season are out of Order, but you could tell the Episodes were Burned to Disk and they did a kick ass job with the Disk Label. Looks damn near Professional.
Point is, how many Troops/Contractors are/were being Deployed?????? Yet they bitch and extend their Greedy ways into other Countries to stop People from Sharing. In some Countries, they Censor some/most Movies for BS reasons. Depending on the Movie, they will make Millions/Billions of Dollars through Theater, Disk and DL Sales. I think they can handle Sharing. If anything, they get tons of Support if you think about it.

 

[retrofan_k]

Here is something I dont get:
The Film Industry get BILLIONS and they are so pissed about some People sharing???? But yet, when I was in Iraq twice, (More than likely still goes on and has been for Decades), you go into a Store run by a Local National, you can find Pirated Movies on DVDs. A lot of them are CAMRips, TS, HDTS, and if lucky, the Screener/HDTC/R5 Copies. All what the Military says is, when you go through Customs, you can only have 1 Copy of any Movies/TV Shows. Hell I got Star Trek Voyager Complete Series over there. I could tell it was Pirated. Where else would you see DVD9 on a Disk??????? LOL. Couple Episodes in the 1st Season are out of Order, but you could tell the Episodes were Burned to Disk and they did a kick ass job with the Disk Label. Looks damn near Professional.
Point is, how many Troops/Contractors are/were being Deployed?????? Yet they bitch and extend their Greedy ways into other Countries to stop People from Sharing. In some Countries, they Censor some/most Movies for BS reasons. Depending on the Movie, they will make Millions/Billions of Dollars through Theater, Disk and DL Sales. I think they can handle Sharing. If anything, they get tons of Support if you think about it.

Same applies to Hong Kong. Proper genuine fakes there kiddo

 

[Frederica Bernkastel]

Every time a site of this nature is taken down, it creates a gap. People so far have filled those gaps with other such trackers, and even with new technologies. I don't think this will change anything, but the story of how they tracked down KAT is pretty bad-ass and kinda alarming if you care about privacy.

 

[Bubsy Bobcat]

Man that's quite sad to hear. I always used to use KAT before I found other sites and ways to pirate my stuff.

 

[Abcdfv]

Unless you know the Owner of the private torrent site, they are certainly not piss easy to get an invite thats why they are private to only let in who they know and buying an invite wont get you in, that will only get you globally banned for life! USN is that a newsgroup site or something? I get all my material from my sites that you wont even find or able to google anywhere on the net!

Or you can just check reddit for sites taking open registration. Or get on the IRC channels and take an interview. If you can't get into a private tracker it's because you're not trying. Once you're in one the rest are easy.

 

[zoogie]

They came back as MEGA.

Expect KickArseTorrents within days and led by the same guy.

 

[leonmagnus99]

ow damn, this was my favourite torrent website :/

*tries loading kat ph* ;-; ow no..

 

[FAST6191]

Peh torrents. Tracker wise I am sure something else of equal or greater quality will be along before too long, if it is not already in place.

but the story of how they tracked down KAT is pretty bad-ass and kinda alarming if you care about privacy.

I haven't read the full full writeup yet but the newspaper story stuff just made it seem like poor opsec, that or the owner was clueless enough to not play to those rules despite being what they are. Some of stuff done for Scene topsites was worse and this just seems like a similar idea to the lulzsec stuff from a few years back, albeit possibly without the insider.

Nowadays Dutch servers are better and hold better retention and posts are not always deleted due to their copyright laws.

That is quite amusing given the activities of Brein these last few years.

 

[Dust2dust]

Here is something I dont get:
The Film Industry get BILLIONS and they are so pissed about some People sharing???? But yet, when I was in Iraq twice, (More than likely still goes on and has been for Decades), you go into a Store run by a Local National, you can find Pirated Movies on DVDs. A lot of them are CAMRips, TS, HDTS, and if lucky, the Screener/HDTC/R5 Copies. All what the Military says is, when you go through Customs, you can only have 1 Copy of any Movies/TV Shows. Hell I got Star Trek Voyager Complete Series over there. I could tell it was Pirated. Where else would you see DVD9 on a Disk??????? LOL. Couple Episodes in the 1st Season are out of Order, but you could tell the Episodes were Burned to Disk and they did a kick ass job with the Disk Label. Looks damn near Professional.
Point is, how many Troops/Contractors are/were being Deployed?????? Yet they bitch and extend their Greedy ways into other Countries to stop People from Sharing. In some Countries, they Censor some/most Movies for BS reasons. Depending on the Movie, they will make Millions/Billions of Dollars through Theater, Disk and DL Sales. I think they can handle Sharing. If anything, they get tons of Support if you think about it.

There is some level of hypocrisy, of course. This reminds me of what I saw, once, when I was shopping in a local Future Shop store, before they were closed down or swallowed by BestBuy. In the TV section or computer displays (can't remember which), a new movie, just released on DVD, was playing for demonstration. It was Wall-E. Well, every few minutes, their player would display at the bottom of the screen the message: "Now playing Wall-E.PROPER.DVDRip.XviD-ULTRASON.avi" They couldn't even be bothered to crack open a dvd, to play the disc. They just downloaded it.

 

[Smoker1]

There is some level of hypocrisy, of course. This reminds me of what I saw, once, when I was shopping in a local Future Shop store, before they were closed down or swallowed by BestBuy. In the TV section or computer displays (can't remember which), a new movie, just released on DVD, was playing for demonstration. It was Wall-E. Well, every few minutes, their player would display at the bottom of the screen the message: "Now playing Wall-E.PROPER.DVDRip.XviD-ULTRASON.avi" They couldn't even be bothered to crack open a dvd, to play the disc. They just downloaded it.

LMFAO. Wow.