| Torrent directory, magnet links provider | |
| Available in | Multilingual (30+ languages, English primary language) |
|---|---|
| Website | katcr.co (revival) |
| Registration | Optional |
| Users | Over 1 million per day (August 2015) |
| Launched | November 2008; 10 years ago |
| Current status | Offline |
| Part of a series on |
| File sharing |
|---|
| Technologies |
| Video sharing sites |
| BitTorrent sites |
| Academic/scholarly |
| File sharing networks |
| P2P clients |
| Streaming programs |
| Anonymous file sharing |
| Development and societal aspects |
| By country or region |
| Comparisons |
The Host (2013) Download.torrent - The Host (2013): A race of aliens who are non corporeal go from planet to planet looking for hosts. They come to Earth and basically take over human bodies. The Host (2013) Torrent. The Host (2013) The Host: A race of aliens who are non corporeal go from planet to planet looking for hosts. They come to.
PickTorrents Pro: Search & Download Torrents $0.99 PickTorrents Pro is a lightweight torrent search engine which provides you good quality torrents without any Ads/pop ups. KickAss Torrents was leading torrent website that commenced its operations in the year 2008. It became popular over time and even outperformed TPB. KAT went offline in 2016 and now people are left.
KickassTorrents (commonly abbreviated KAT) was a website that provided a directory for torrent files and magnet links to facilitate peer-to-peer file sharing using the BitTorrent protocol. It was founded in 2008 and by November 2014, KAT became the most visited BitTorrent directory in the world, overtaking The Pirate Bay, according to the site's Alexa ranking.[1] KAT went offline on 20 July 2016 when the domain was seized by the U.S. government. The site's proxy servers were shut down by its staff at the same time.[2]
In December 2016, former KAT staff members revived the KAT community by creating a website with its predecessor's features and appearance.[3]
Blocking and censorship
KickassTorrents says that it complies with the DMCA and it removes infringing torrents reported by content owners.[4]
KAT was initially launched in November 2008 at the domain name kickasstorrents.com.
On 21 April 2011, KickassTorrents moved to the Philippines domain name kat.ph after a series of domain name seizures by the United States Department of Justice against Demonoid and Torrentz.[5] The site later moved to several different domains, which the operators plan to do every six months, including ka.tt, kickass.to, kickass.so, kickasstorrents.im and kat.cr.[6]
On 28 February 2013, Internet service providers (ISPs) in the United Kingdom were ordered by the High Court in London to block access to KickassTorrents, along with two other torrent sites. Judge Richard Arnold ruled that the site's design contributed to copyright infringement.[7][8]
On 14 June 2013, the domain name was changed to Tonga domain name kickass.to as a part of the site's regular domain change.[9]
On 23 June 2013, KAT was delisted from Google at the request of the MPAA.[10] In late August 2013, KAT was blocked by Belgian ISPs.[11] In January 2014, several Irish ISPs started blocking KAT.[12] In February 2014, Twitter started blocking links to KAT, however by the end of February 2014, KAT was unblocked on Twitter.[13] In June 2014, KAT was blocked in Malaysia by the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission for violating copyright law.[14]
In December 2014, the site moved to the Somalia domain name kickass.so. Reports stated that it was moved as a result of site's regular domain change.[15][16] On 9 February 2015, kickass.so was listed as 'banned' on Whois, causing the site to go offline. Later that day, the site reverted to its former domain name kickass.to.[17]
On 14 February 2015, it was found that messages mentioning 'kickass.to' were blocked on Steam chat, but 'kickass.so' and other popular torrent websites were not blocked, only flagged as 'potentially malicious'.[18]
On 23 April 2015, the site moved to the Isle of Man based domain name kickasstorrents.im[19] but was quickly taken down later that day and on 24 April it was moved to the Costa Rica based domain name kat.cr.[20]
By July 2015, the kat.cr address had been removed from Google Search's results. After the removal, the top Google search result for KAT in many locations pointed to a fake KAT site that prompted visitors to download malware.[21]
In October 2015, Portugal bypassed its courts by making a voluntary agreement between ISPs, rightsholders and the Ministry of Culture to block access to KAT and most of the other popular BitTorrent websites.[22]
At the same time, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox blocked access to KAT because of security concerns with some of the ads pointing to malware.[23] In April 2016, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox blocked KAT due to phishing concerns.[24] Both blocks were later removed after KAT dealt with the concerns.
In June 2016, KAT added an official Tor network .onion address.[25]
One of the main domains of the site went up for sale in August 2016.[26][27]
Arrest of the alleged owner
On 20 July 2016, the United States Department of Justice announced that it had seized the KAT.cr domain and had identified its alleged owner. Artem Vaulin (Ukrainian: Артем Ваулін), a 30-year-old Ukrainian man known online as 'tirm', was detained in Poland after being charged with a four-count U.S. criminal indictment.[28] The remaining domains were taken offline voluntarily after the KAT.cr domain name was seized.[29] Following the seizure of the original KAT domain multiple unofficial mirrors have been put online. These have no connection to the original team who have been urging users to exercise caution.[30][31] A number of these mirrors have since been taken down.[32]
Vaulin was arrested after investigators cross-referenced an IP address he used for an iTunes transaction with an IP address used to log into KAT's Facebook page. The FBI also posed as an advertiser and obtained details of a bank account associated with the site.[29] The investigation was led by special agent Jared Der-Yeghiayan, who also tracked down Ross Ulbricht, the operator of the online black market Silk Road.[33]
The criminal complaint, filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois by Homeland Security Investigations, said that it was in possession of full copies of KAT's hard drives, including its email server. The investigation suggested that KAT made over $12 million per year in advertising revenue.[34]
In late August 2016, the Department of Justice followed the complaint with a full grand juryindictment of Vaulin and two other defendants, Ievgen Kutsenko and Oleksandr Radostin; while Vaulin was still being held in Polish prison.[35] Vaulin has both a Polish and US legal representation Ira Rothken as his lawyers to handle the allegations.[36][37] In November 2016, a Polish appeals court refused to allow bail for Vaulin, stating the evidence provided by the US is sufficient to keep him in prison.[38]
Revival
In mid-December 2016, some of the former KAT staff and moderators launched a website with a similar appearance as the original under the domain katcr.co.[3]
References
- ^'Alexa Top 500 Global Sites'. Retrieved 14 November 2014.
- ^Nick Statt (20 July 2016). 'KickassTorrents domains seized after alleged owner is arrested in Poland'. Retrieved 21 July 2016.
- ^ ab'KickassTorrents Brought Back to Life by Original Staffers (Updated) - TorrentFreak'. 16 December 2016.
- ^'KAT DMCA'. Archived from the original on 25 February 2015.
- ^Ernesto (22 April 2011). 'KickassTorrents Moves to Kat.ph'. TorrentFreak. Retrieved 15 March 2014.
- ^Ernesto (23 April 2015). 'KickassTorrents Moves to Isle of Man Domain Name'. TorrentFreak. Retrieved 23 April 2015.
- ^O'Carroll, Lisa (28 February 2013). 'Online piracy: ISPs ordered to block access to three file-sharing websites'. The Guardian. London. Retrieved 1 March 2013.
- ^EMI Records Limited, Infectious Limited, Liberation Music Pty Limited, Polydor Limited, Simco Limited, Sony Music Entertainment UK Limited, Universal Music Operations Limited, Virgin Records Limited, Warner Music UK Limited, Weainternational Inc v British Sky Broadcasting Limited, British Telecommunications Plc, Everything Everywhere Limited, TalktalkTelecom Group Plc, Telefónica UK Limited, Virgin Media Limited[2013] EWHC 379 (Ch) (28 February 2013), High Court (England and Wales)
- ^'Moving to Kickass.To — Blog — KickassTorrents'. Kickass.to. Archived from the original on 14 March 2014. Retrieved 15 March 2014.
- ^Ernesto (23 June 2013). 'MPAA Kicks KickassTorrents Off Google With 'Precision' Takedown'. TorrentFreak. Retrieved 24 June 2013.
- ^'Belgische providers blokkeren meer torrentsites' (in Dutch).
- ^'Irish Internet Providers Roll Out KickassTorrents Blockade'. TorrentFreak. 19 January 2014. Retrieved 19 January 2014.
- ^'Twitter Blocks Kickass.to Links, Says They're Unsafe'. TorrentFreak. 21 February 2014. Retrieved 25 February 2014.
- ^'Kickass.to has been officially blocked in Malaysia'. 25 June 2014. Retrieved 21 July 2016.
- ^'KickassTorrent Moves Domain to Somalia'. Softpedia News. 18 November 2015. Retrieved 21 July 2016.
- ^'KickassTorrents Moves to Kickass.so Domain Name'. TorrentFreak. 17 November 2015. Retrieved 21 July 2016.
- ^Ernesto (9 February 2015). 'Kickass Torrents taken down by domain name seizure'. TorrentFreak. Retrieved 21 July 2016.
- ^Ernesto (14 February 2015). 'Steam Censors Kickass.to Mentions in Chat Client'. TorrentFreak. Retrieved 25 February 2015.
- ^'KickassTorrents Moves to Isle of Man Domain Name'. 23 April 2015. Retrieved 7 June 2015.
- ^'KickassTorrents is moving to kat.cr domain'. kat.cr. 25 April 2015. Archived from the original on 6 June 2015. Retrieved 7 June 2015.
- ^Ernesto (18 July 2015). 'KickassTorrents Disappears From Google After Penalty'. TorrentFreak. Retrieved 20 July 2015.
- ^Ernesto (26 October 2015). 'Portugal Blocks Popular Torrent and Streaming Sites'. TorrentFreak. Retrieved 21 July 2016.
- ^Ernesto (27 October 2015). 'KickassTorrents Blocked Again Over 'Harmful Programs''. Retrieved 21 July 2016.
- ^'Chrome and Firefox Block KickassTorrents as 'Phishing' Site'. TorrentFreak. 12 April 2016. Retrieved 12 April 2016.
- ^'KickassTorrents enters the dark webs, adds official Tor address'. Torrentfreak. 7 June 2016. Retrieved 21 July 2016.
- ^'KickassTorrents Domain for Sale at just $230'. Archived from the original on 10 August 2016. Retrieved 9 August 2016.
- ^'KickassTorrents Domain Goes Up For Sale For A Minimum Bid of $230'. Retrieved 9 August 2016.
- ^'Kickass Torrents targeted by DOJ, feds say website distributed $1 billion in copyrighted works'. Washington Times. 20 July 2016. Retrieved 21 July 2016.
- ^ abVan der Sar, Ernesto (20 July 2016). 'Feds Seize KickassTorrents Domains, Arrest Owner'. TorrentFreak. Retrieved 21 July 2016.
At the time of writing the main domain name Kat.cr has trouble loading, but various proxies still appear to work. KAT’s status page doesn’t list any issues, but this will be updated shortly.
- ^Van Der Sar, Ernesto. 'KickassTorrents Mirrors and Imposters Spring into Action'. Torrent Freak. Retrieved 2 August 2016.
- ^Van der Sar, Ernesto. 'KickassTorrents Community Resurrects, Without Torrents'. Torrent Freak. Retrieved 2 August 2016.
- ^Protalinski, Emil. 'KickassTorrents mirrors go down, but new KAT sites quickly spring up'. Vebture Beat. VentureBeat. Retrieved 2 August 2016.
- ^Ockenden, Will (22 July 2016). 'Kickass Torrents: How did the US Government bring down the file-sharing site?'. news.com.au. Retrieved 24 July 2016.
- ^'Can KickassTorrents Make a Comeback?'. TorrentFreak. 21 July 2016. Retrieved 21 July 2016.
- ^Van der Sar, Ernesto (25 August 2016). 'U.S. Government Indicts Three Alleged KickassTorrents Operators'. TorrentFreak. Retrieved 25 August 2016.
- ^Van der Sar, Ernesto (28 July 2016). 'KickassTorrents' Alleged Owner Retains Kim Dotcom's Lawyer'. TorrentFreak. Retrieved 26 September 2016.
- ^'Extradition proceedings underway in Kickass case'. Complete Music Update. 4 October 2016. Retrieved 9 October 2016.
- ^Alleged KickassTorrents Owner Stays in Prison, Court Rules 2 November 2016
Back in July 2017, popular BitTorrent site
Kickass Torrents (KAT cr) was taken down by the United States authorities.The peer-to-peer file sharing site became the world's biggest piracy hub after The Pirate Bay went offline.
Now shortly after law enforcement shut down the original KAT site, a group of devoted site staffers launched the Katcr.co forum in hopes of bringing back the Kickass Torrents download sites to its former glory, soon.
New KickAss Torrents Site 2019
Katcr.co team has now launched a new torrent website that looks identical to the original Kickass site. It hosts a good number of torrent files and magnet links for movies torrent, TV shows, software, games, and music torrent.
The new Kickass torrents site (KATcr.co/new) is back online with some of its original staff and dedicated uploaders.
Here's what the KAT cr team said on the site’s launch:
'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.'Meanwhile, Australian ISPs has blocked access to 5 top torrent download websites, including Pirate Bay and Isohunt.
Following the shutdown of the original Kickass Torrents portal earlier this year, several mirror sites came up online, claiming to be the real reincarnation.
Here below I have listed a few KickAss proxy sites:
But many of those KickassTorrents proxy and mirrors include malicious copycats. Such sites attempt to steal users personal information and credit card credentials.
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The team behind the new Kickass site promises that the pirates are safe and secure at its new portal.
'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,' one of the team members told TorrentFreak.The KAT cr crew members also believe that the original operators of the Kickass Torrents website will walk free.
Best Torrent Sites Like The New KickAss Torrents
- TorLock – torlock.com
- The Pirate Bay – thepiratebay.org
- iDope – idope.se
- 1337x – 1337x.to
- Yify Torrent / YTS – yts.am
- ExtraTorrent – extratorrent.si
- LimeTorrents – limetorrents.io
- Zooqle – zooqle.com
- Dirty Torrents – dirtytorrents.com
Though we do not support any act of copyright infringement, here are some best alternatives people sharing over social media:
1. The Pirate Bay — thepiratebay.org
Among the best KickAss Torrent alternatives is the PirateBay. But over copyright infringement, many ISPs have blocked it and its mirror domains.
However, users still access the website using a
best secure VPN service or a proxy to bypass service providers restrictions.The PirateBay is one of the best torrent search engine used worldwide. TPB includes pirated material in the form of magnet links for software, movies, and music.
2. 1337x — 1337x.to
If you love sites like pirate bay and kickass, 1337x would be your go-to torrent download site.
The peer to peer file sharing site has been around for a long time that makes it a reliable and prominent. Just like KickAssTorrent, 1337x offers a simple, user-friendly search bar with no complex design.
You can also search torrent files and magnet links by categories. Or you can head on to its Top 100 section for most trending torrents on the website.
The New Kat Torrent
3. TorLock — torlock.com
TorLock is one of the best torrenting sites that allows users to download high-quality torrent files and magnet links.
Torlock is a unique movie download site that offers music, games, software, the latest TV series, and movies for free.
With 'No Fakes Torrent Site' as its official motto, Torlock is dedicated to listing 100 percent verified torrents only. The site even challenges users to find fake torrents and get a compensation of $1 for each finding.
Download Torrent The Host Kat B
4. iDope — idope.se
This is a new torrent and movie download site. It allows you to discover anything you search for but also claims never to track its visitors. iDope is an excellent alternative to kickass torrent.
The iDope homepage includes not much more than a torrent indexer bar with a tagline: 'A tribute to KickassTorrents.' iDope even has a Chrome plugin and an Android app. The service is also available on the darknet.
5. Yify Torrent / YTS — yts.am
Also known as the YTS torrent tracker, this site is yet another best KickAss Torrents alternative. I am sure all the movie lovers are aware of YTS movies. But this is not the original YIFY torrent website to download YIFY movies.
The original site went dark after its leader pleaded guilty in New Zealand Jurisprudence. YTS.am is an excellent clone of the original website. But you need to beware of other fake torrent sites promoting itself as YTS.6. ExtraTorrent — extratorrent.si
Among these, ExtraTorrent is also an excellent alternative to KickAss.
ExtraTorrent was once the most popular and best torrent sites. But the site disappeared on May 17, 2017, with a message of shut down on its website. ExtraTorrent has now made a comeback with a new domain.
Since government keeps a close eye on BitTorrent protocol, users prefer proxy sites in front of their torrent clients to hide ip address and access kickass.
But you should note that there is no legal way to download movies for free that are still in theaters.