After popular torrents streaming website Kickass Torrents was taken down following the owner Artem Vaulin's arrest in Poland, several clone websites had popped up. However, on Tuesday, several of the websites including Kat.am and Kickasstorrents.website were inaccessible.
Kickass Torrents was attracting more than 50 million users every month and was pulled offline a week ago, leaving several users stranded. Following the move, several mirror versions with kickass in the name had come up. Some of the torrents were launched by ISOHunt, which had also created mirror versions of The Pirate Bay, when it was taken down over legal issues.
Over the weekend, reports surfaced that the Motion Picture Association (MPA) took down Kat.am after a complaint was raised with AMNIC, which is the Armenian registry responsible for the .am domain.
"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 wrote in its email to Kat.am operator.
The mirror launched two new domains â€" kickass.cd and kickass.mx â€" which offers the same service as Kat.am, and both still remain accessible.
A message on both the websites reads: "The authorities suspended our original domain Kat.am, we have now shifted to Kickass.mx - Your support keeps us alive."
The owner of Kickass Torrents, a 30-year-old Ukrainian who on the internet goes by the name "tirm," has been charged in the United States for running the most visited illegal file-sharing website, "responsible for unlawfully distributing well over $1 billion of copyrighted materials." The U.S. wants to extradite Vaulin stateside in order to prosecute him for Kickass Torrents.
The charges faced by Vaulin include conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement, money laundering and criminal copyright infringement.
While it remains unclear when Kickass Torrents will come back online, users are moving to popular websites such as The Pirate Bay, EZTV.it, Torrentz, Extra Torrent, RARBG, IsoHunt.to, Lime Torrent, 1337x.to and others, offering similar services.
