It's been less than 24 hours since the United States Justice Department arrested Artem Vaulin, the kingpin of KickassTorrents (KAT), in Poland and shut down the file-sharing website. Now, the world's number one BitTorrent site is back online, thanks to IsoHunt.
IsoHunt is the very file sharing organisation, which resurrected The Pirate Bay in April this year after Swedish government authorities raided its office.
Now, it has opened a KAT clone — KickassTorrents.website — with the design layout of the page looking almost identical to the original. It is hosting files dating back to the last one-and-a-half years or so, and has urged people to archive more files.
When we opened the KickasTorrents' mirror website, we found that a manifesto pops up on the screen that condemns the arrest of Artem Vaulim, calling it an attack on the freedom of rights on the Internet. It goes on state why a clampdown on BitTorrents is a waste of time and money, and instead asks government authorities to focus on controlling terrorist attacks and eradication of poverty and diseases.
Last year, similar torrent sites such as YIFY, EZTV and Popcorn Time were taken down, but they are thriving on the internet under different domain names and mirror websites.
Recap on KickassTorrents' ringleader arrest:
In an ironic twist of events, Artem Vaulin (aka tirm), who has been accused under multiple charges of copyrights infringement, was betrayed by the purchases that he made legally on Apple iTunes. The 30-year-old Ukranian was arrested in Poland by the U.S. Justice Department. Vaulin used his "me.com" account for his transactions on iTunes, which led the U.S. government to his bank account and his two different IP addresses in Chicago, eventually leading to his arrest.
It is said that Vaulin earned around $31 million in advertisement revenue between August 2015 and March this year.
Read more: After The Pirate Bay, KickassTorrents (KAT) goes offline
