It’s only been a day since popular BitTorrent file sharing site Kickass Torrents bit the dust, and alternative clones have already started popping up around the web. The most notable of the lot is a KAT mirror put up by the team behind another torrent portal called isoHunt.
The move, according to a manifesto that appears the first time the website loads – complete with change.org and whitehouse.gov petitions – is in support of the now-offline torrent portal’s proported owner, Artem Vaulin.
The 30-year-old from Ukraine was arrested yesterday in Poland in a complex sting operation involving the aid of Facebook and Apple, and what followed was the seizure of all KAT domains as well as any bank accounts linked with them. The manifesto declares Vaulin’s arrest and subsequent shuttering of KicassTorrents a violation of the “freedom of rights of internet users.”
The mirror isn’t as thorough a clone of the original as was isoHunt’s unofficial resurrection of The Pirate Bay. Talking to VentureBeat, the isoHunt team revealed that it is hosting files “from the last year to year-and-a-half,” though it lacks the forum and support of the original. The site has only been live for a few hours, however, so it’s too early to say how things are going to play out for the site. In fact, as the aforementioned manifesto itself points out, there is no guarantee as to how long it’ll last before going the way of the portal it aims to clone.
Kat.cr is a website we all know and love, and the world will never be the same without it. That’s why before it will come back we’ve made the mirror of Kat.cr with all the torrents we could find. It’s not perfect but if you want to save and archive something, now it’s the time! We don’t know how long it can last, but at least it’s something.
This KAT clone isn’t the only one on the web right now and considering the popularity of the KAT name, we expect several others to pop up over the course of the following days and weeks, with some likely looking to rope in KAT’s orphaned user-base with malicious intent. We wouldn’t advise that you go looking.
(Via: VentureBeat)
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