KickAssTorrents owner 'Artem Vaulin' arrested! KAT's offline! The next target & future of BitTorrents! Discussion On!
KAT was one of my favorite torrent sites and this came as a shocking news!
For many Steemers, undoubtedly it made life a lot easier as well as interesting! I've been getting my fix of the old House M.D. tv show off late and managed to watch a couple of marvel series such as The Flash in the past few months.
I'm certain many of you are surprised just as I am about this development! If you've never been on a torrent site you are an internet noob. If you've downloaded a commercial product off the web without paying for it (including saving YT videos) and prefer to have KAT and similar torrent sites shut down; you are a hypocrite!
Artem Vaulim will pay for 'a crime' committed by hundreds of millions of internet/p2p users across the world.
The current update is that:
ARTEM VAULIN, 30, of Kharkiv, Ukraine, allegedly owns and operates Kickass Torrents, or KAT, a commercial website that since 2008 has enabled users to illegally reproduce and distribute hundreds of millions of copies of copyrighted motion pictures, video games, television programs, musical recordings and other electronic media, collectively valued at more than $1 billion, according to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago. KAT receives more than 50 million unique monthly visitors and is estimated to be the 69th most frequently visited website on the Internet, according to the complaint.
Read the full report on Justice.gov
What we've learn't about p2p related arrests in the past?
- In the past we've seen this happen with IsoHunt which was shut down but sprung back up soon after.
- Even ThePirateBay was taken down but the proxies are back up and keeping the tradition alive.
- BT Junkie is gone for good.
- Recently YIFI ran into trouble.
Will Kat.cr spring back up again?
For all we know it might! Or the Feds may get Verisign to seize the domain for them. In anycase KAT is down right now and I'm unable to access the proxies myself. You can check the status of the proxies here! —It didn't work for me though.
KAT ignored DMCA Warnings
There were many complaints filed by American studios and were all shot down in the following manner.
Greetings,
Your request has been reviewed, but cannot be processed due to one (or
more) of the following reasons:
1 The Claim wasn't written in English language.
2 You provided no evidence showing that you are the copyright holder
or that you are acting on behalf of the copyright holder;
3 You provided no evidence showing that the content is legally
copyrighted;
4 There were more then [sic] 30 torrents mentioned in the Claim email;
5 Your content is hosted on a different website.
Please, make sure to fulfill all the conditions mentioned above before
sending a claim.
You can find more detailed information regarding the DMCA email
layout via the following article - https://kat.cr/dmca/
Respectfully,
KAT team
Most websites wouldn't have lasted a few weeks with DMCA complaints filed against them but KAT stayed put for years!
Why KAT?
Probably because KAT until January 2016, hosted their servers in Chicago, Illinois and a Canadian hosting service which HSI and IRS were able to track down using MLAT.
Feds are also perhaps sending a message out to other p2p networks that they are coming to get them!
What is the future of BitTorrent?
As of today, using BitTorrent is the best way to share media across the world for most of the masses. There maybe other ways including the dark web where legal and illegal transfers of media/content as well as transactions may occur. But for the rest of us who prefer to use the torrents for simple things may have to look elsehwere.
WebTorrent
The technology that enables all this is called WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication). WebRTC was standardized by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to support browser-to-browser applications like voice calling and video chat without browser plugins.
You can read more from the founder of WebTorrent here.
This seems like a good option and you can read more information on their FAQ: WebTorrent FAQ
Top 5 BitTorrent sites for 2016
If you thought KAT going down is the end of it all, there's still hope! It's hard enough for for government agencies to track down the owners much less bring the site down at their whim and fancy, everytime! You may want to consider the following websites if you need to download your files from torrents.
If you prefer to stream tv series online:
Who is the next target?
I've been a p2p user since Napster, Kazaa, Limewire and Vuze days and some of these were breakthrough at their time. While the governments can hamper growth of p2p file-sharing I don't think it is entirely possible to tear it down! Maybe the next target for the US government could be any of the websites I've mentioned in the top list which by any means aren't the only p2p sites out there!
With global upload and download speeds increasing and newer methods of sharing becomes viable, peer-to-peer sharing will remain for a long time to come!
Where does Steemit stand in all of this!
This is what @dan has to say about it:
Steemit.com will have to filter illegal content or risk being shutdown all together
those who upvote illegal content are effectively paying for bootleg material.
a. this makes the crime and penalties much more severe for both parties
b. this makes the poster and voters much bigger targets for lawsuits.
All of that said, there is absolutely nothing stopping a decentralized downloadable app from displaying this kind of information. This is a prime example of where a separate currency dedicated to this job might make more sense than building this on Steem. For starters, a large number of steemians will downvote illegal content whereas a dedicated platform would presumably be held by those who value that kind of sharing.
You can read more comments from @dan and @tuck-fheman here!
A decentralized downloadable app might be a good option. I'm not aware of any at the moment. However, if someone here builds one, i'd be happy to try it out.
I hope everyone was using their VPNs! Sad day. RIP Kat :(
We can only hope for. Sad day indeed! :(
Forget about it, let's make a steemittorrent :D steemit is the future.
Perhaps it may be possible but it won't happen from the founders of Steemit. Someone else will have to take the initiative. It would be interesting to see how a p2p could work off the blockchain similar to Steemit but purely for bootlegged content. However, it would pose it's own set of problems.
https://github.com/TuckFheman/Link
damn right!
I must say I am a tad sad that it has finally been brought down. All the other torrent sites are rubbish and either heavily malware ridden or hoaching with intrusive adverts.
(Hoaching - Scottish/Glasgow slang: crowded/busy or disgusting) :-)
Absolutely right. This was a safe site to use also their search functionality was splendid! I'm going to have to look elsewhere for my weekly doze of Jap anime now! :D
Do you have an android phone? There are some good torrent search apps out there. My current favourite is 'Torrential' it just scrapes the results out of multiple sites and you can then download straight without visiting them meaning no awful adverts/spyware and it's search is reasonably good
Yes but i have a much older phone and since i'm on the computer all the time I prefer to download here! I will check the app you mention when I upgrade my phone, hopefully soon! :)
They were talking about it in this reddit thread as well: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/4tuaa3/kickasstorrents_domains_seized_owner_arrested_by/
judging by the comments, even redditors are fearing their personal information, the decentralized web will bring new freedoms to everyone. Apple had apparently fed his IP to to government which lead to his arrest.
*right click image - open in new tab for full resolution.
That is correct! The implications of it in the west could be bad. In some countries anti-piracy laws exist but they are not in effect, unlike in the US. If KAT is under siege will the Feds get hold of user information and crack their whip on everybody? I haven't followed the thread on Reddit yet. But this could potentially turn out ugly...
...perhaps if a platform allowing people to post their content directly and actually get paid fairly for their work without interference from corporations or third-parties. A platform where the actual consumers held the ability to upvote - without a personal cost - what they deemed worthy and interesting. I wonder, I wonder.
It could work well too. However, most content creators at the scale we see in the media are backed by huge corporations with vested interests. It would be hard for them to break away from the limelight and release their work into this type of platform. Hence, the market for bootlegged material will always be there. Steemit provides an opportunity to share your content and earn from it. However, there is no guarantee your work will even get noticed, let alone get paid. So this platform may not appeal to everyone of the hard working creators of software, music and other forms of media electronically available for distribution.
Love this post @firepower
The mention of Napster and Limewire definitely made me smile. Feels like such a long time ago. The fight of the US government is futile, as has been proven in the past.
Their business model is antiquated and not fit for the modern world where everyone is connected by high-speed fiber optics. The rise of streaming services such as Netflix says it all.
Funny how they keep trying though. Reminds me of their silly 'war on drugs', which has failed miserably as well.
Thanks! :D I somehow missed replying to your comment! US and some of it's idiotic policies have failed but they still seem to going ahead with it nevertheless.
tit for KAT
Ukraine gives up torrent hacker in exchange for continued 'weapons' aid on the Russian front.
Coinbase helps FBI and the very next week steals all their users ETC ... complete with BTC Jesus "all funds are safe" twit pics. Cuz' Coindefaced has an official DoJ don't fuck with us pass.
As far it goes for music Soulseek is still online. Its been around before the torrents era. Here is a story from Vice about the places we used to find content and how they dissapeared over the years.
http://www.vice.com/read/illegal-downloading-sites-of-my-youth-p2p-limewire-kazaa
thanks for the link! :)
IPFS will be the future for torrents