KickassTorrents, operating from the Kickass.to domain, has millions of visitors per day.

Starting a few hours ago, many of these visitors noticed that their beloved torrent site isn’t working properly.

Those who try to access the site now get a blank page instead of the usual overview of popular torrents. The same is true for Kickass’ proxy sites.

At the moment it’s unclear what’s causing this issue. While some users fear the worst, the most likely explanation is that it’s a technical problem that will be fixed relatively quickly.

TorrentFreak asked the Kickass.to team for more information on the outage, but we have yet to hear back. We will update this article when more information becomes available.

Update: Nothing to worry about. Kickass informs us that they are doing some maintenance. The site should be back in an hour or so.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The site indexes millions of torrents, some of which are then shared through Facebook, Twitter and other social media. For example, author Alex Sayf Cummings posted a link to a torrent of his book Music Piracy And The Remaking Of American Copyright in a tweet recently.

Cummings was obviously inviting people to grab a free copy from the site, but Twitter is not making that easy. Those who click on the link in question are presented with an ominous warning.

“The site you were trying to visit may be unsafe! This link has been flagged as potentially harmful.”

In the grey-on-black fine print in the bottom right corner, Twitter points out that people can proceed to the site at their own risk, but not everybody may be that gutsy.

The big question of course is why Twitter classified KickassTorrents as an unsafe website. TF contacted the company for an explanation, but 24 hours later we have yet to hear back.

On its website Twitter claims to use Google’s safe browsing diagnostic tool, but the Kickass.to domain is not blocked here. Perhaps even stranger, KickassTorrent’s old domain Kat.ph gets the same blocking treatment.

It appears that Twitter has decided on its own that the torrent site is a no-go zone for users. This is an option, as the site explains in one of its help sections.

“Even if Google’s diagnostic report of the URL is clean, we may decide to continue blocking the URL on Twitter as potentially harmful,” Twitter notes.

Whether the fact that KickassTorrent’s links to a lot of copyright infringing content has anything to do with the blockade is unknown. Previously Facebook restricted access to The Pirate Bay for the same reason, but this decision was reversed after a few months.

Thus far, Kickass.to appears to be the only large torrent site that’s blocked by Twitter, but perhaps it’s just the start?

Update 26 February: Twitter has unblocked Kickass.to links

^{Photo: Michael Theis}

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Pretty much all sites of a respectable size are targeted on occasion by unknown sources, and today several large sites appear to be hit.

TV-torrent group EZTV told TF that they are dealing with a serious flood of unwanted connections, which renders the site unavailable.

EZTV has currently no indication when the site will return, but they will do all they can to solve the issues as soon as possible.

Around the same time as EZTV’s problems started, KickassTorrents went down too. TorrentFreak asked the Kickass.to team for more information on the outage, but we have yet to hear back.

Whether KickassTorrents’ problems are also DDoS related is unsure at the moment. At the time of writing the site’s DNS servers are not resolving to an IP-address either.

As if that’s not enough, Extratorrent ran into trouble as well. Earlier today the site had some downtime, but a cached version is currently being served through Cloudflare.

We will update this article when more information becomes available.

Update: EZTV has returned, KickassTorrents is still having problems.

Update: Extratorrent is having issues again and released the following statement.

Update: Kickass.to appears to be coming back slowly. The KickassTorrent’s team confirmed to TorrentFreak that they have been dealing with a series of DDoS attacks.

Update: EZTV is down again.

“Extratorrent servers are under strong DDOS attack right now… We are trying to resolve issues. Sorry for inconvenience. Your support is highly appreciated.”

Kickass.to unreachable

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

In 2009 Ireland was one of the first countries in the world to have an ISP block The Pirate Bay on copyright grounds. Eircom backed out of a court battle with the major music labels and blocked the site voluntarily.

Getting other providers to follow suit proved to be more difficult due to legal complications, but last year the ball was rolling again.

Following an action initiated by EMI, Sony, Warner and Universal against the ISPs UPC, Imagine, Vodafone, Digiweb, Hutchison 3G and Telefonica O2, in June 2013 the High Court gave the ISPs just 30 days to block The Pirate Bay.

After this success the labels moved on to their next target, KickassTorrents, or KAT for short. Following The Pirate Bay blockade KAT quickly took over the crown, and up until last week was one of the 25 most-visited websites in Ireland.

Hoping to significantly reduce this threat the record labels applied to the High Court to have local ISPs block subscriber access to KAT. The request was successful and Mr Justice Kelly ordered the new blockade in December.

This week most ISPs implemented the blockade, much to the disappointment of Irish KAT visitors.

Interestingly, Eircom, the largest Internet provider in the country, was not included in the court case, but together with several other ISPs chose to implement a block voluntarily. As a result, Eircom subscribers are now greeted with the following message when they attempt to access the site.

As with all blockades there are still plenty of workarounds that let people access the KAT site. Several users note that KAT proxies work just fine, and a VPN also lifts all restrictions.

Nevertheless, the music labels will celebrate the new blocks as a victory and, with KAT taken care of, they are likely to prepare another lawsuit targeted at the next large torrent site, continuing the game of Whack-A-Mole..

Update: The KAT team tells TorrentFreak that the traffic to their site is severely impacted by these blockades. They are advising users to use a VPN. Proxies are also an option, although people have to be careful as these are not officially run by KAT, so the proxy owner could harvest logins and passwords.

“We are still getting traffic from those countries where KAT is blocked. But its amount is significantly lower (up to 10% from what we had before).

“These measures can be be pretty effective when appropriate authorities react very quickly on domain or IP change. For example, for Italy it’s just 3 days.”

“Our suggestion would be to use VPN servers placed outside country where site is banned and user is actually present. Also it will have sense to start using Google DNS or similar service to bypass domain block.”

“As an alternative it’s also possible to start using any KAT mirrors. But all those mirrors are provided by 3d parties so we would not recommend to enter credentials while user are using them.”

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Ireland was one of the first countries in the world to have an ISP blockade of The Pirate Bay. ISP Eircom backed out of a court battle with the major labels represented by the Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA) and in 2009 blocked the site voluntarily.

Progress on having The Pirate Bay blocked by other ISPs then slowed due to legal issues, but once Ireland’s signing into law of the European Union (Copyright and Related Rights) Regulations 2012 had been completed, the ball was rolling again.

Following an action initiated by EMI, Sony, Warner and Universal against the ISPs UPC, Imagine, Vodafone, Digiweb, Hutchison 3G and Telefonica O2, in June 2013 the High Court gave the service providers just 30 days to block The Pirate Bay.

Now, just as expected, the labels are back. In their crosshairs this time is KickassTorrents, the second most popular torrent site in the world. The early signs suggest that achieving success will be a walk in the park.

On Monday, Sony, Universal and Warner Music will head off to the High Court with demands that Ireland’s largest ISPs – Vodafone, UPC, O2, Digiweb and Hutchison 3G Ireland – block subscriber access to the site.

Speaking with the Irish Times, UPC – one of the few ISPs worldwide to aggressively contest blocking demands – confirmed it had been served with legal papers.

“UPC declined Irma’s request in pre-litigation correspondence to voluntarily block Kat. Our position is that ISPs should not, on a voluntary basis, choose what can or should be consumed by internet users. Such matters are for the government or the courts to decide,” the ISP said.

However, not all ISPs are taking such a strong line. Imagine, an ISP that was listed among the defendants in The Pirate Bay case, says it has informed the labels it will block KickassTorrents voluntarily if the defending ISPs lose their case.

IRMA chief Dick Doyle also confirmed that his group had reached agreements with several other ISPs in Ireland to block Kickass, even though they are not involved in the case. Aside from Eircom’s position against The Pirate Bay, this appears to be the first time that ISPs have agreed in bulk to block a file-sharing site voluntarily.

Success in this case for the labels, which appears to be almost guaranteed, will open up the possibility of even wider blockades in Ireland such as the ones across the water in the UK. And with ISPs now offering voluntary blocking if the conditions are right, the way seems smoother than ever before.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

This popularity attracted the attention of several copyright holder groups, including the Philippine record label association PARI. In an attempt to shut down the site, PARI launched a legal procedure in which the KAT.ph domain owners are accused of facilitating copyright infringements.

This resulted in the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL) issuing a temporary restraining order last week. The dotPH registry was ordered to suspend the domain name for 72 hours, a period which has now ended.

This means that once again the KickassTorrents team has full control over its KAT.ph domain.

Although the torrent site isn’t expected to revert to the .ph domain, the move is important as the KickassTorrents team are able to point the site’s users to the new Kickass.to domain. This minimizes the loss in visitors and helps Google to index the site’s new home.

At the same time the legal proceedings will continue behind the scenes.

The dotPH registry, which maintains the database of PH domain names, say that the domain owners now have the option to appeal the court’s decision. The company adds that
the domain could again be at risk if the previous order comes back into effect.

“If the restraining order is extended, we will comply and suspend the domain,” dotPH founder Emil Avancena tells TorrentFreak.

Whether this will happen is uncertain at this point. The KickassTorrents team hasn’t made any public comments on the case thus far. However, the Intellectual Property Office says that it will try to hear all sides of the story before making a final decision.

“Unless the complainant voluntarily desists from pursuing the case, it shall proceed. The IPOPHL shall decide on the matter based on the evidence presented by all parties,” IPOPHL informs TorrentFreak.

Even if the action results in a permanent domain seizure, this will achieve very little as KickassTorrents has already moved to another domain.

DotPH’s Emil Avancena agrees that domain seizures are not very useful when it comes to making websites unavailable to the public. He sees more results from ISP blockades, which have become more prevalent in European countries recently.

“It’s a simple matter to move to another domain. Getting ISPs to block the sites would be more effective but not foolproof, as the Great Firewall of China has shown,” Avancena says.

KickassTorrents, meanwhile, appears to be unfazed by all the commotion and continues business as usual at the new Kickass.to domain. It’s unknown if they intend to file an appeal and in their announcement of the domain change there is no mention of a legal case at all.

“We had to drop Kat.ph as a part of our global maintenance and move to Kickass.to. This was a hard decision, but it was necessary for the further development of KickassTorrents,” the KAT staff explain.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

This status has put the site on the radar of the U.S. Government and a wide variety of entertainment industry groups around the world.

Yesterday the torrent site ran into trouble with its KAT.ph domain, and there were signs suggesting the domain was no longer in control of the original owners. Over the past few hours more details have emerged, and the Government of the Philippines has now confirmed that the domain name has been seized on copyright grounds.

The seizure is the result of a complaint filed by the Philippine Association of the Recording Industry and several individual music labels. The complaint stated that KickassTorrents was causing “irreparable damages” to the music industry, and a local court agreed to suspend the site’s domain.

“The complaint alleges that the registrant of KAT.ph is violating intellectual property rights by making copyrighted music available for download to its users,” the dotPH registry informed TorrentFreak.

Early this week the Philippine Intellectual Property Office issued a temporary restraining Order directing the dotPH registry to suspend the KAT.ph domain for 72 hours. The order, signed by the IPO Bureau of Legal Affairs, will become final if the domain owners don’t appeal.

According to dotPH, the company that maintains the database of PH domain names, the music industry first complained about KickassTorrents in 2011. However, the company said at the time that it would only take action following a court order.

“dotPH was initially contacted by the complainants’ lawyers in December of 2011 with a demand to take down the domain, and dotPH agreed to cooperate if provided with an order from a court or appropriate authority,” TorrentFreak was informed.

“dotPH received the restraining order earlier this week and subsequently suspended kat.ph in compliance with IPO’s directive,” the registry adds.

While the case is presented as a local action aimed at preventing piracy of original Filipino music, it wouldn’t be much of a surprise if U.S. forces have also been applying pressure. In its latest Special 301 Report the U.S. Government listed the Philippines on its copyright “watch list,” demanding further action against so-called rogue sites.

“The United States looks to the Philippines to take important steps to address piracy over the Internet, in particular with respect to notorious online markets,” the Office of the United States Trade Representative wrote in its report.

TorrentFreak reached out to the KickassTorrents team for a comment on the domain seizure, but we have yet to hear back.

Whether the seizure will have much of an effect has yet to be seen. After the domain name was taken away KickassTorrents quickly moved to a new one, and the site continues to operate under the new Kickass.to domain.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

KickassTorrents, known more recently as simply KAT.ph, has become one of the most loved torrent sites on the Internet. In common with The Pirate Bay, when the site goes down TorrentFreak gets bombarded with emails from users wanting to know what’s going on. Today is such a day.

A couple of hours the ago the site simply disappeared from the Internet with the site’s operators departing with a brief “We have an unexpected maintenance” message on Twitter.

All emails to KAT’s operators are currently bouncing due to what appears to be an issue with their KAT.ph domain. “Destination .PH Domain does not exist or has expired,” is the message we get in return.

As can be seen from the image below, a check for KAT.ph indicates that the site’s DNS is functioning ‘correctly’, except for in Italy and India where it’s null routed and blocked respectively.

However, on closer inspection we can see that instead of pointing to the usual IP addresses associated with the site, currently the KAT.ph domain points to an IP address range associated with DotPH, the official registrar for the Philippines where KickAss registered their domain.

We cannot say with absolute certainty what this means, but it seems likely that KAT may be experiencing issues with DotPH over their domain. It is feasible that the domain has been reclaimed by the registry although on what grounds and for how long is impossible to predict.

In the meantime TorrentFreak has been informed by ProxyBay.me, the operator of the ProxyKat.net site (which still provides access to KickassTorrents), that around 50% of his proxies have begun diverting to a new domain, Kickass.to. Whether this switch is a permanent or temporary measure will probably become apparent in the hours to come.

Finally, as previously reported, a site called TorrentMirrors claims to keep torrent sites alive, even while they’re down. At this moment it appears to be keeping its word.

Update: According to a post by KAT staff member Chew the .ph domain has been seized.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.