Hollywood just shut down a popular KickassTorrents mirror

Almost one week ago, KickassTorrents was delivered what many thought to be a death blow, as the US government seized its domain name, switched off its servers, and arranged for its alleged owner, Ukrainian national Artem Valin, to be arrested in Poland.

But this was by no means the end for the world’s largest torrent site. Almost overnight, dozens of mirrors have emerged, including one operated by IsoHunt.

Now, it seems that there’s a growing backlash against these mirrors. The latest casualty is KAT.am, which had its domain name suspended after the Motion Picture Association (MPA) complained to AMNIC – the Armenian registry responsible for the .am top-level domain.

The MPA also issued the operator with a sternly-worded legal threat.

“This Notice requires you to immediately (within 24 hours) take effective measures to end and prevent further copyright infringement. All opportunities provided by the Website to download, stream or otherwise obtain access to the Entertainment Content should be disabled permanently,”

This hasn’t had much of an effect though. Speaking to TorrentFreak, the operator insists that he has no intention of backing down. He has also launched two other mirrors, kickass.cd and kickass.mx which, at the time of writing, are yet to be suspended.
This game of online whack-a-mole has been tried before with The Pirate Bay, and it failed. It seems unlikely that it will succeed this time around.