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With the help of former staffers, KickassTorrents lives again

KickassTorrents is back from the dead.

 

John-Michael Bond

Tech

Posted on Dec 19, 2016   Updated on May 25, 2021, 8:53 am CDT

Internet pirates lost an important battle in July when KickassTorrents, the site of sites for many downloaders, was forced to walk the plank by the federal government. The shutdown came suddenly, and while a few attempts at resurrection happened, nothing seemed to stick. But nothing truly stays dead on the internet, and now KickassTorrents has returned in a modified form.

The new KickassTorrents site has launched with a clean user database, meaning it will be awhile before their stocks of torrents are refilled to original levels. However, the relaunch comes at the hands of a group of former site staffers and is supported by many of the site’s power uploaders. In a statement to TorrentFreak, the KAT team explained the community is what held the site together during the down time.

“The majority of our original Staff, Admins, and Moderation team joined us after Kat.cr went down – which is something we’re very proud of. This shows the loyalty, dedication and real love for KAT that we all share… We have all our major uploaders on board, and they continued to share tirelessly even before the torrent engines returned. The torrent community can continue to expect to see uploads from all the names they know and trust.”

The KickassTorrents reboot wants copyright holders to be aware they don’t store any files with copyrighted materials on the site itself, and that it features a DMCA takedown procedure should rights holders wish links to their content be removed. While the site featured some downtime in the first few days it was up, this was due to overwhelming traffic demands, not a shutdown. If you’d like to visit KickassTorrents to revisit the glory days, you can find it here. You might just have to check back a few times throughout the day to get the site to load.

H/T Torrent Freak

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*First Published: Dec 19, 2016, 5:12 pm CST