Kickass Torrents Piracy Web Site Taken Offline

The Kickass Torrents site was temporarily offline when its “.so” domain was confiscated by Somalian registry officials, the Inquisitr reported this morning. The Kickass web site was one that allowed web users to download files believed to be in violation of copyright.

“Wired UKreported the Kickass take-down via domain seizure, but later updated the status at 2 p.m. local time that Kickass was back up and running, the Inquisitr reported. ‘It appears that Kickass Torrents has reverted to its former “.to” domain, with no loss in functionality. Perhaps not such a hurdle, after all,’ the update read. The statement was reported as saying, ‘Whether this is a stopgap measure remains to be seen though — the site was previously targeted for takedown requests through that URL, so further “relocation” efforts may occur.’ ”

The Register reported the outage of the Kickass web site with the headline, “Kick Somali pirates get their asses kicked by Japanese a**-kicker.” After changes in Google policy to stop piracy on the internet, Kickass had changed its web site to the “Kickass.so” Somalian domain from the previous “Kickass.to” domain it had been using.

“Following the takedown of The Pirate Bay in December (and following suspicions that the revived site may be under surveillance), Kickass became the biggest torrent-search site on the internet, servicing millions of visitors every day, the Register reported.

The owners of the Kickass web site seemed to think they would succeed hosting their site on the “.so” top-level domain, but this was not to be after they had the domain confiscated by Somalian registry officials due to the content of the Kickass web site.

“KickAss Torrents, the filesharing site that replaced the Pirate Bay on top of the online piracy food chain, has changed Web addresses after its domain was seized early Monday. The hugely popular torrent site has relocated from KickAss.so to KickAss.to after a prolonged outage turned out to be interference from law enforcement,” International Business Times reported.

The Kickass web site, which allows users to download copyright protected materials illegally, such as movies, music, and games, had been down most of this past Sunday. The administrators of the Kickass site reportedly disclosed that is had lost it’s “Kickass.so” due to a copyright complaint against the site. By some time the next day, the Kickass web site was back online using the “.to” domain it had previously been using.

“The (Kickass) site attracts millions of visitors each day, though the only comparable blueprint for its future belongs to the Pirate Bay. The Swedish torrent site relocated to domains based throughout the world — at one point they joked about moving to North Korea — over more than a decade only to be shut down in December, maybe for good,” International Business Times reported.

[Image of the Kickass web site from International Business Times]