Movie Studios 'Take Down' Popular KAT Mirror

Following the shut down of KickassTorrents website -- after its alleged owner was arrested, Hollywood studios are playing the game of cat and mouse with pirates to put an absolute end to KickassTorrents. An anonymous reader writes: One of the most popular KAT mirrors has had its domain name taken down following pressure from the major Hollywood studios. The Armenian .AM registry was quick to disable the KAT.am domain, after it received a stark warning from the Motion Picture Association, representing Hollywood's major studios. This notice requires you to immediately (within 24 hours) take effective measures to end and prevent further copyright infringement. All opportunities provided by the website to download, stream or otherwise obtain access to the entertainment content should be disabled permanently," MPA's email reads.As TorrentFreak reports, the takedown of kat.am domain isn't the end of the website. The publication spoke to the operator of the website, and learned that they were "making continuous" attempts to bring the website back -- utilizing the channels available. Kat.am is down already, but kickass.cd and kickass.mx mirros have since cropped up. Slashdot understands that Kickass torrent community is now back in action again, on a whole new domain.

Comments

and so the great downfall begins.

[nimbius]

son: what ever happened to the time when we owned a movie studio?
grandfather: oh it was a magical time. we hired actors and writers and musicians. we had neat ideas and we tried our best at first to make the greatest films we could think of with the best actors. Cagney and Gable and Poitier and Ball...they were a wonder to behold.
son: and then? did they all go away? what happened?
father: we spent 30 years playing whack-a-mole with Scandinavian and Armenian web sites that took pocket change to run but millions to shut down. We cranked out 15 ghost busters and another 25 twilight movies. in the end, I think the Fast and the Furious 185 was about a talking irish cat? i cant remember. mother: everyone gather round! the torrents finished and we can finally watch Taken 56. this is the one where they take his altoids and hes even madder!

Re:Happened with Demonoid and Isohunt, too.

[Opportunist]

Shh. It keeps them busy and occupied. Think of it as the game you buy for your kids so they shut up and stop asking "are we there yet".

Game of Thrones

[iris-n]

I wanted to pay for Game of Thrones. I really wanted. I have plenty of money and I like the show, why not? And I wanted to watch it on Sunday night rather than wait for the torrents to be available on Monday morning.

So I looked it up online, it turns out that HBO does stream it, for 15 dollars a month. A bit expensive for a single series, but whatever. I have already watched too much of it for free anyway. Ok, do they stream it live? Yep, but on US time. In the UK they show it Monday night. Ugh. So paying for it won't even let me watch it on Sunday night. Whatever, at least it will be more convenient than downloading torrents from KAT or Pirate Bay, that are constantly being DDOS'ed. So, how do I sign up? I need to use a smartphone. Weird stuff. Why I smartphone? I'm not going to watch Game of Thrones on my phone, I'm going to watch it on my computer. Ok, so they allow me to watch it on my computer after I sign up through the phone. Sigh. Ok, to Google Play, and, where is it? No HBO app. Oh, it's US only. So go fuck yourself, HBO. Back to KAT.

And this is why torrent sites will never disappear. Even people that can and want to pay for the content are forced to torrent it. Even if they manage to kill KAT, there will be other sites where I will watch the next season.

So hosting/sharing torrent files really illegal?

[jbarr]

I must be missing something huge, because it seems to me that KAT really wasn't doing anything illegal, to the extent that they were hosting torrent files, not actually illegally hosting copyrighted content (like MegaUpload was.) Torrent files are really only informational files containing metadata and links to tracker sites--none of which is in-and-of-itself illegally hosting copyrighted material.