News of Kickass Torrents (KAT) shutting down sent a shock-ripple throughout the torrent kingdom. It took some time for torrent users to sink in the news. First they took it lightly as they were sure their favorite torrent portal would come up yet again. It didn't, except a few "mirror" sites that were all spam, asking for personal user information. They were taken down too.
Hopes were up again when it was reported that KAT was operating secretly using another domain name. However, as latest reports suggest, KAT as well as Torrentz are gone for good. KAT was undoubtedly the biggest torrent site after it topples The Pirate Bay from the top position.
Torrentz chose to voluntarily shut down its operations as they thought it was too big a risk to be operating in such a tough legal environment. Owner of KAT, Artem Vaulin, was arrested in Poland and is facing criminal charges in the US for copyright infringement. Illegally distributing copyrighted content may bring in a charge of over $1 billion.
Hence, Torrentz decided to end operations altogether to avoid risking arrest for similar violations, writes The Bitbag. With such huge criminal liability being placed on torrent site owners, it is perhaps only a matter of time that other torrent sites will start shutting doors.
In the meantime, sites doing swift business are The Pirate Bay and Extratorrents. As per Torrent Freak, Extratorrents' signups increased by 200 percent and traffic by 300 percent. Other sites experiencing a surge in traffic are TorrentHound, Torrentdownloads, RBG, YTS.ag and isoHunt.to.
Movie and TV show downloaders at this point can only hope for KAT to make a comeback although the situation does not seem to favour torrent users. For the time being it is also advisable to not be using torrent sites as authorities are on the lookout for offenders.