KickassTorrents down: Feds have seized domains and arrested owner

[poetbil]

...Poland (a Great Country) unfortunately wants to be the watchdog of USA in EU

[Hervé]

Posted by Akasha (here)
[...] The title should read "some domains" if in fact any have been seized and it isn't in reality just Hollywood fueled BS to deter potential users.

The main domain was indeed down and inaccessible for two days, here; with a "Server not found" then a "This site has been seized by DHS" page.

Only a few proxies are still up and running.

[norman]

Google might be playing games with me here in UK, I'm not having any luck finding a link for KAT that isn't one of the now dead links.

[Conde]

Kickass Torrents returns after a whole day offline

http://kickasstorrents.website

[bluestflame]

no doubt they'll be going through database of ip addresses that have downloaded from the various connected sites


uh oh

[Lifebringer]

Care must be used if they/feds installed address tracking cookies on the streamers that follow.

[Anchor]

Posted by Star Tsar (here)

Posted by Hervé (here)
Apple gave the authorities personal data of Artem Vaulin after they matched an IP address used for iTunes with the IP address used for logging in to KAT’s Facebook account.

So sloppy he had no clue authorities where after him?

I doubt his was sloppy.

Let's assume I am right - then that means this story is the US GOV's parallel construction done in order to hide how they really got him.

[Jancy]

With what black projects, elite, cabal have got tech wise I just assume they have the most advanced equipment to hone in on any one at any time.

[KiwiElf]

KickassTorrents resurfaces online, as all piracy sites do

By James Vincent on July 22, 2016 06:07 am @jjvincent

http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/22/12...ites-spring-up

The alleged founder and operator of the most popular torrenting site in the world, KickassTorrents (KAT), has been apprehend by the US authorities and the site's domains seized. However, as we learned with the campaign to stop The Pirate Bay, you just can't keep a good pirate site down. We've already spotted at least two clones of KAT, including one created by IsoHunt (KickassTorrents.website — a fairly limited mirror), and a second located at KAT.am.

http://kat.am/

""hosted on multiple cloud servers to prevent blockade.""

A statement emailed to The Verge from the creators of KAT.am claims the site is "hosted on multiple cloud servers to prevent blockade, and the hosting information is well hidden behind Cloudflare." The anonymous contact said they'd improved on the original KickassTorrents site by adding a mobile version, and noted (with the original, ambiguous, wording retained here) that the site "will has the complete torrent database of KAT, including the comments, user information intact." We're not sure whether that means KAT.am has this complete log of comments, etc., or will have it at some point in the future. At the time of writing this article, access to KAT.am was spotty.

All this shows what we already knew: that you can't completely remove piracy sites from the internet, but you can discourage those who want to run them. The Department of Justice's statement on KAT's alleged founder and operator, 30-year-old Artem Vaulin, charges him with "unlawfully distributing well over $1 billion of copyrighted materials," and claims that he collected roughly $16 million in advertising revenue a year. KickassTorrents may be back (sort of), but Vaulin's future is about get a lot tougher.

[kanishk]

If you Google EXTRATORRENT, then you can find the same website hosted on different domains. Everyday they change the domin and host the entire website on that new domain. So just search EXTRATORRENT on google and find their links.

[Ewan]

Posted by KiwiElf (here)
[B][SIZE="3"]

http://kat.am/

""hosted on multiple cloud servers to prevent blockade.""

A statement emailed to The Verge from the creators of KAT.am claims the site is "hosted on multiple cloud servers to prevent blockade, and the hosting information is well hidden behind Cloudflare." The anonymous contact said they'd improved on the original KickassTorrents site by adding a mobile version, and noted (with the original, ambiguous, wording retained here) that the site "will has the complete torrent database of KAT, including the comments, user information intact." We're not sure whether that means KAT.am has this complete log of comments, etc., or will have it at some point in the future. At the time of writing this article, access to KAT.am was spotty.

Didn't last long, not found.

[KiwiElf]

Yeah, it was pretty "iffy" when I posted, (altho it sounded good - they probably will make a comeback )

[bluestflame]

something going on with the internet in general , have noticed a seemingly coordinated altering of a few sites i regularly visit

[muxfolder]

KAT was only brought down because the owner made s**tloads of money and didn't pay any taxes to any country. Of course, only big corporations and elite can get away with it. This guy was not part of the club.

As for the business side, the complaint mentions a variety of ad payments, suggesting that KAT made over a dozen million dollars in revenue per year.

It also identifies the company Cryptoneat as KAT’s front. The Cryptoneat.com domain was registered by Vaulin and LinkedIn lists several employees of the company who were involved in the early development of the site.

“Many of the employees found on LinkedIn who present themselves as working for Cryptoneat are the same employees who received assignments from Vaulin in the KAT alert emails,” the complaint reads.

Interestingly, none of the other employees are identified or charged.

To gather further information on the money side, the feds also orchestrated an undercover operation where they posed as an advertiser for “a website purportedly advertising a program to study in the United States.” This revealed details of several bank accounts, with one receiving over $28 million in just eight months.

“Those records reflect that the Subject Account received a total of approximately €28,411,357 in deposits between on or about August 28, 2015, and on or about March 10, 2016.”

https://torrentfreak.com/can-kickass...meback-160721/

I think this has only little to do with copyright infringements. After all, The Pirate Bay is still up and running.

[KiwiElf]

Likewise with torrentz.eu - still up & running

https://torrentz.eu/

[muxfolder]

Another good one is Demonoid.

Does anyone have an invite to iptorrents? Please pm me. I have a seedbox so there won't be any ratio problems.

[muxfolder]

Posted by KiwiElf (here)
Likewise with torrentz.eu - still up & running

https://torrentz.eu/

Looks like it's now down as well.

https://torrentfreak.com/torrentz-sh...rewell-160805/

Torrentz.eu, one of the world's largest torrent sites, has announced "farewell" to its millions of users. The meta-search engine, which hosted no torrents of its own but linked to other sites including The Pirate Bay, has decided to shut down.

torrentzFounded in 2003, Torrentz has been a stable factor in the torrent community for over 13 years.

With millions of visitors per day the site grew out to become one of the most visited torrent sites, but today this reign ends, as the popular meta-search engine has announced its shutdown.

A few hours ago and without warning, Torrentz disabled its search functionality. At first sight the main page looks normal but those who try to find links to torrents will notice that they’re no longer there.

Instead, the site is now referring to itself in the past tense, suggesting that after more than a decade the end has arrived.

“Torrentz was a free, fast and powerful meta-search engine combining results from dozens of search engines,” the text reads.

TorrentFreak was contacted by the operator of Torrentz, who prefers not to comment at the moment. It’s clear, however, that another major torrent site is shutting down, leaving a gaping hole.

Breaking story, more updates will follow

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by KiwiElf (here)

torrentz.eu - still up & running

http://torrentz.eu

Very sadly, now apparently gone.

The welcome message now says (my emphasis)

Torrentz was a free, fast and powerful meta-search engine combining results from dozens of search engines.

And a search for anything at all yields

Torrentz will always love you. Farewell.

[norman]

Is there any special significance to the timing, I wonder?

Errr.... if there was a special operation to take over the internet while the banks are down, or something similar, What check-box items would they have during the count down ?

[Ewan]

KAT seems to be functioning via -

https://kickass.unblocked.live/

How safe it is, well was it ever?