Kickass Torrents' KAT.ph Domain Seized By Philippine Authorities

hypnosec writes "Kickass Torrents hasn't been accessible since sometime yesterday, and now it has been confirmed that the domain name of the torrent website has been seized by Philippine authorities. Local record labels and the Philippine Association of the Recording Industry said that the torrent site was doing 'irreparable damages' to the music industry and following a formal complaint the authorities resorted to seizure of the main domain name. The site hasn't given up, and is operating as usual under a new domain name. The government of the Philippines has confirmed that the domain name has been seized based on formal complaints and copyright grounds."

Comments

You know

[ArchieBunker]

You "editors" could spend all of two minutes to link to the new domain. Or is that too much to ask?

Re:You know

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently, since you couldn't be bothered to do it either.

http://kickass.to

Re:You know

[Sean]

Thank you for posting. Any site that has a link taken away from it by any authority should be linked to by everyone in retaliation for the censorship.

The editors should have linked to it in the summary. They should fix the oversight and link to it now.

Re:You know

[girlintraining]

The editors should have linked to it in the summary. They should fix the oversight and link to it now.

The editors are now owned an operated by a corporation. As a corporation they can be sued. As they can be sued, they aren't going to partake of legal action that might jeopardize their profits. This isn't like Digg or a dozen other sites that, upon hearing from their users they had caved to political pressure mounted a massive PR campaign.

The slashdot of years past no longer exists. It won't take the chance anymore. In other news, what I really want to know is why torrent sites aren't going to .onion domains ... which can't be taken down by any government order. As a 'hidden service', they're just a new tor circuit connection away from restarting... no DNS, no jurisdictional issues... not much chance of finding out even where they really are. And the .torrent files and magnet links don't take up much bandwidth, unlike the P2P transfers, which don't involve the site anyway...

I really don't get why they're sticking with blockable technologies... maybe they're just stubborn or trying to prove a point.

Re:You know

[TheP4st]

You wont be able to find any illegal content hosted by the site no matter how long and hard you look, what you will find however are .torrent files and magnet links. Big difference but not one I'd expect you to be willing to accept.

Re:You know

[TheP4st]

I should perhaps added that legality is a matter of jurisdiction "in the 2004 case of BMG Canada Inc. v. John Doe, court decided that both downloading music and putting it in a shared folder available to other people online were legal in Canada." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_aspects_of_file_sharing#Canada

Re:You know

[SuricouRaven]

Accessibility. There are some people who pirate for a hobby, who would love any excuse to go cloak-and-dagger. There are also many, many more casual pirates who are just thrifty or lazy. If accessing a torrent site requires spending an hour researching and configuring new technology, they'll just find a different site - or go buy what they want legitimately.

Re:You know

[king neckbeard]

Well, "dura lex set lex" - should you ever be so unlucky to be fined for downloading say the new Iron Man movie, then I suggest that you find a stronger legal defense than that.

I'm not making a legal defense. I'm saying that the law itself is bad, and strictly speaking, it doesn't pass a strict Constitutional muster. The law as it stands is clearly following a different philosophy than the only justified one (public benefit), so it should not be respected, and if anything, should be actively defied. Believe it or not, the law can be wrong, and often is. Also, your broken latin phrase doesn't apply, since the law is not harsh, but injust. It is often grossly disproportionate to the extent that there have been Constitutional challenges to statutory damages, and the harshness of the law is a major concern, but the bigger flaw is that it's based in medieval economics, and has no place in the modern world. The relevant terms are themselves quite telling. 'Copyright' originated from the right to copy, back when it conveyed a positive right to make copies, because it was part of a censorship regime in which proliferation of unsanctioned knowledge was forbidden. If you are ignorant on the matter, look up the Stationer's Company. 'Royalties' are another big hint that the system is antiquated, although a number of prominent organizations calling themselves 'guilds' doesn't help the matter much.

simply freeloading the result of someone's hard work because you can, is not the answer either. I find it unethical. I don't find it wrong to pay a reasonable price for music, movies or books that interest me. And for those that I don't want to pay the price for, well then I don't download them.

Sweat of the brow arguments are legally invalid in regards to copyright law, per Feist v. Rural. And ethically, sharing information is generally a good thing, with only a few exceptions. I do no oppose supporting the arts, and I likely have done more towards that end than you have.

You've also thrown out the term 'freeloading,' yet another sign of an incompetent copyright proponent. Are you TRYING to fill up your bingo card on that? I would direct you to read Mark Lemly's paper on the subject.

Re:You know

[nospam007]

Camembert (2891457)
'Yeah right, it is soo typical of this entitlement generation to find excuses like that. '

Please cease and desist from using the Camembert name.
Camembert was granted a protected designation of origin in 1992 after the original AOC in 1983.
If you're not in Normandy, France and a Cheese, you are not entitled to that name even if you're old enough to be a bit runny. It's a copyright violation.

Re:You know

[mwvdlee]

1560 hits to, presumably, mostly illegal torrent files, as found by Google and directly linked to the .torrent file:
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&ie=UTF-8#safe=off&sclient=psy-ab&q=rick%20astley%20filetype%3Atorrent

Big nasty illegal downloading site: 61 hits, presumably a small subset of what Google finds.
http://kickass.to/usearch/rick%20astley/

Neither site hosts the actual .torrent files.

Please explain why one should be considered illegal and the other not?

Re:You know

[Jane Q. Public]

"What? Someone linked to the site directly above. /. staff do have the ability to remove posts and as such are every bit as liable for links in the comments as for links in the summary."

No, they aren't. This reflects ignorance of how the law in the US actually works. (No insult intended. A great many people don't know how it works.)

First, the Safe Harbor provisions of the DMCA -- the only good provisions in the DMCA -- free them from liability from any content uploaded by their users... as long as they don't mess with that content.

Another important legal precedent says that if they DO mess with that content, including editing, censoring, or even top-down moderation, then they DO become liable for that content. Because then they are controlling that content, and if they control it they become liable for it. (Question: if you remove one "illegal" post but not another, why would you NOT be responsible for leaving that other post up? The law says you are. You made a choice.)

There is an exception: if a DMCA take-down request comes from an outside party, then they may be obligated to take down that post. That's one of the many BAD provisions of the DMCA, because it imposes a sort of "prior restraint": forcing people to act before there is any proof or court determination of illegal conduct.

So the upshot is: except for stupid parts of the DMCA (that is to say, most of it), they are far better off just leaving content alone, and not trying to censor it. They stand a much lower chance of running into legal difficulties.

New Domain

[cffrost]

http://kickass.to/

No https yet.

Re:New Domain

[cffrost]

For anyone who just want the encryption https provides, you can enter https manually and accept the "wrong domain" warning; I've done so, and confirmed that the kay.ph certificate is compatible.

KAT has been pretty diligent about their certs, so they should have one for .to soon.

Interesting

[dido]

The .PH domain administrator, a certain fellow named Joel Disini whom I once met several years ago, has been known to have treated the domain as his proprietary interest. He has vigorously resisted several efforts over the years to redelegate the domain to the agencies of the Philippine government and other interested organisations, ever since it was granted to him by Jon Postel in 1990, and he has taken a dim view of attempts to control the registry ever since, so I wonder what might have gone down behind the scenes to make this happen.

Re:It Would Be Great Fun...

[coId fjord]

3. The real losses are nowhere near what the MPAA and RIAA wants you to believe. If they can sell a song for 99 cents then the actual damage for downloading a song is 99 cents

Actually, copyright infringement causes no real losses; all it does is cause someone to not gain something, and even that is not certain. Yes, it is not even certain that copyright infringement causes someone to not gain money, and that is because it is also not certain that the person would have purchased the product if he/she could not download it.