It has been less than 24 hours since one of the world’s most popular BitTorrent file sharing sites, Kickass Torrents was forcibly removed from the internet. You may not be surprised to hear read this, but alternative clone like sites have already begun to pop up all over the web. As it stands, the most notable of these sites is a mirror of the KAT site, which has been created by the people behind another popular torrent site called iosHunt.
A Manifesto
It seems as though this site has been put online by those who support the now offline KAT owner Artem Vaulin. Because when the site first loads up, you are greeted by change.org and whitehouse.gov petitions.
The Shut Down of Kickass Torrents
In what has been described as one of the most complex operations by international police forces plus Facebook and Apple. The owner of KAT, 30-year-old Ukranian Artem Vaulin was arrested yesterday. His arrest was followed up by the confiscation of all of his domains using the name KAT, the closure of bank accounts and the seizure of anything related to him.
Remember I mentioned a Manifesto, well it declares that Vaulin’s arrest and the closure of the KickassTorrents website to be in direct violation of the “freedom of rights of internet users.”
The Clone Site
As far as clone sites go, it looks as though this one was put up in a hurry. As it is not a thorough clone of the KAT site, you can think of it in similar terms to what isoHunt did with its clone of the Pirate Bay.
What’s surprising about all that has gone on in the last 24 hours is isoHunt’s apparent willingness to talk about what it has done. Talking to VentureBeat, the people at isoHunt openly revealed that it is hosting some files “from the past year and a half,” although there is no forum and no support on offer.
Right now, the site has only been live for a few hours, and it is much too early to say how the site will last. In fact, if you read the Manifesto, it does mention that it may not be long before the cloned site ends up going down in the same way as Kickass Torrents.
Kat.cr is a website we all know and love, and the world will never be the same without it. That’s why before it will come back we’ve made the mirror of Kat.cr with all the torrents we could find. It’s not perfect but if you want to save and archive something, now it’s the time! We don’t know how long it can last, but at least it’s something.
Final Thoughts
As far as the popularity of KAT is concerned, that has not dissipated overnight. And you can see this in the number of clone sites that are continually popping up. In fact, I expect many more to keep popping up over the course of the next few days and weeks. However, there is a concern surrounding them, and that is, that not of all of their creators may have the best interest of orphaned KAT users on their minds. Some sites may have been created with malicious intent, so don’t go looking for them.
Source: VentureBeat
