Kickass Torrents Live Again?

Pirate website Kickass Torrents, has been brought to life again. The website has reportedly been reincarnated by the website's original staff. As everyone may know the website was seized earlier this year after its alleged ringleader Artem Vaulin was arrested in Poland and the domains of the website were seized. The website however never died entirely thanks to its clone websites.

Kickass Torrents is now fully operational and maintains the original look, reports Torrent Freak. The website currently has a clean user database and appears to include original staff members. I could only access the new website after a couple attempts which indicates that the website is now under tremendous traffic.

"The majority of our original Staff, Admins and Moderation team joined us after Kat.cr went down - which is something we're very proud of. This shows the loyalty, dedication and real love for KAT that we all share," the Kickass Torrents team told TorrentFreak. The team added that they faced several issues in putting the website again in working condition.

"We have all our major uploaders on board and they continued to share tirelessly even before the torrent engines returned. The torrent community can continue to expect to see uploads from all the names they know and trust," added the team.

"In order to keep our members safe we chose to rebuild and keep only safe elements. Despite the fact that a rebuild took longer, the safety of our community comes first," the team said.

The team pointed that they now come under a similar takedown procedure as YouTube which means that Kickass Torrents won't store copyrighted material on the website.

Update: The site appears to have some technical issues, as it went down after a short while.

Source: Torrent Freak

BitTorrent Fires CEOs; Shuts Down Los Angeles Studio and BitTorrent Now

The peer-to-peer file sharing technology company, BitTorrent Inc, has fired two of its newly appointed CEOs and is reportedly shutting down BitTorrent Now. BitTorrent CFO Dipak Joshi has also stepped down as interim CEO, according to a report by Variety. The company is also closing its Los Angeles-based production studio. An unknown number of staff members have also been laid off.

BitTorrent has been trying to steer clear of the 'piracy' tag and had since been focusing on more legitimate forms of entertainment. To combat that, the company in June had launched BitTorrent Now, an ad-supported streaming app that offered music and movies from independent artists. The app was available on Android, iOS devices, and Apple TV.

The app was started under the headship of CEOs Jeremy Johnson and Robert Delamar, who have been removed from the company's board of directors, according to an email sent by Bram Cohen, BitTorrent founder to Variety.

Johnson and Delamar were both appointed in April in a bid to focus on media production and distribution. This new direction resulted in BitTorrent Now! According to sources, the company's spending was "getting out of control," with giant stacks of money being spent on BitTorrent Now.

However, this isn't the first time that BitTorrent had to kill down its ambitious project. BitTorrent in 2008 had closed down its Torrent Entertainment Network store due to poor response from customers. From then on, the company has tried its hand on a number of projects including BitTorrent Live, a news network, and some original shows. The closure of BitTorrent Now will push the company a few steps back in media production.

The company is yet to make an official statement on the same.

Do Subscribe on YouTube!
Follow Me on Twitter>>> @iamBhavish
And like us on Facebook>>> The Gud1

U.S. authorities seize Kickass Torrents domains

Earlier this morning, news broke of Artem Vaulim, the founder of KickAss Torrents, being arrested in Poland and the domain name being seized, making the website unoperational.

In short, the most beloved Torrent Site for those with piracy close to their hearts has gone dark, and in all likelihood for good. Additionally, alternate popular proxies have also been swiftly taken down. As of writing this article, the five most popular KAT proxy sites, along with the main website are no longer accessible due to the fact that KAT servers across the globe are being taken down, instead of just having the domain names seized.

A federal court in Chicago also ordered that a bank account and seven domain names believed to be associated with KAT be seized.

According to the criminal complaint filed with the Chicago court, Kickass Torrents is estimated to be the 69th most commonly visited website on the internet, and has an estimated net worth of over $54 million. Between all of the movies, TV shows, music, video games, and other media it hosts for download, Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell says KAT is "responsible for unlawfully distributing well over $1 billion of copyrighted materials."

Kickass Torrents domain names have been blocked before in various countries across the globe, and its main site appears to still remain functional. But if Poland cooperates with the U.S. in the extradition process, Vaulin will be tried in American courts on counts of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and two counts of criminal copyright infringement.

In a statement Wednesday, Assistant Attorney General Caldwell said, "[Vaulin's] arrest in Poland, however, demonstrates again that cybercriminals can run, but they cannot hide from justice."

Do Subscribe on YouTube!
Follow Me on Twitter>>> @iamBhavish
And like us on Facebook>>> The Gud1