Kickass Torrents shut down 2016: Mirror site owner says someone else will always 'keep the game running'
Earlier in July, the official Kickass Torrents website was shut down leading to the arrest of alleged founder, Artem Vaulin. But the torrent site refuses to sink with more mirror websites popping up.
KAT.am is one of those mirrors and it was the most popular among the big bunch that it was deemed the official incarnation of the fallen torrent site.
It is important to note that these mirrors have nothing to do with the original Kickass Torrents website. Despite this, users seem to flock to them so they are warned to be extra cautious.
With new torrents being added to the KAT.am, it caught the eye of the Motion Picture Association (MPA) and the domain was ultimately eliminated as well.
However, the operator of the site was quick enough to launch replacements – kickass.cd and kickass.mx. The KAT.am owner also does not fear what this could lead to even with the license holders hot on the trail of Kickass Torrents.
"We are not worried, because if it's not us, someone else will keep the game running," the operator told TorrentFreak. "If not the alleged owner, it can be us. If we are not there, still there will surely be someone else. This never ends," he added.
In the past months, torrent sites have been the targets of rights holders and production companies such as The Pirate Bay.
This led to The Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde to call for decentralization of the pirating system in order for torrent sites to survive online and get a strong traction on the web.
"I think maybe people now understand that we shouldn't just have a few sites. Because everything depends on these sites," Sunde told TorrentFreak.
"That's the thing I always wanted, a large hybrid of lots of smaller sites instead of one big target like Kickass Torrents or Pirate Bay," he added.
However, as per Yibada, there are no sites interested to do so at it would it affect the business, leading them to earn less money.
Sunde also sees the hope in the shutdown of Kickass Torrents, and that is for others to step up and "do something fresh, innovative and something new."
