KickassTorrents’ return shows battle against online piracy is tough

The mirror site of KickassTorrents (KAT) surfaced on Friday, a day after the US government arrested the piracy website’s founder, Arten Vaulin, and blocked all the domains of the website.

“This is KAT mirror made by a group of enthusiasts. We fight for Artem Vaulin’s freedom. This site contains KAT torrent base for the last 1-1.5 years. If you want to archive some torrents from KAT, now is the time, because we don’t know how much longer we can keep this site up,” wrote a member of torrent website IsoHunt, where the mirror of KickassTorrents is being hosted.

The arrest of Vaulin by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was said to be a big victory against the war on piracy. Pirated files worth $1 billion are said to have been distributed through the site, which allows users to download pirated content such as movies, music, games and software.

“The development is significant and is likely to have little impact on India, primarily because it could be acting as a deterrent for other torrent sites. They now have to be prepared, as they know they are in the firing line,” said Pavan Duggal, a cyber security expert.

There are thousands of torrent sites, operated by people like Vaulin, who host the content uploaded by millions of users globally on the internet. One of the tactics they use to avoid blockade by authorities globally is to host their domains on multiple service providers and mask these behind services such as CloudFare, which allow anonymity on the internet.

Indians are among the largest consumers of pirated content, driven by those not willing to wait or pay for movies and television shows. A copy of Udta Punjab, a Hindi movie starring Shahid Kapoor and Alia Bhatt, was leaked online and downloaded by thousands of users via torrent after director Abhishek Chaubey won a case against the Censor Board over cuts in the movie. The version given to the censor board was leaked online a day ahead of the movie’s release.

The producers of Udta Punjab were helpless in preventing the movie spreading online.

“In the context of India, we haven’t seen much of taking down of torrent sites. A majority of torrent sites are not located within the territorial boundaries of the country,” Duggal added.

Indians are among the largest consumers of pirated content, driven by those who are not willing to wait or pay for movies and television shows