I may be the last person to understand how this torrenting stuff works but I must not be the first to ask why. This article is not a snitch piece, it’s a you can learn everything you want from Google piece. While researching about the take down of Kickass Torrents I was blown away by the loads of information Google, Bing, Yahoo and any relevant search engine came up with. This is where my concern comes in. For a site like KAT, The Pirate Bay and others to be so cautious, how can they be so open at the same time? Research led me to Reddit links, Instagram pages, but the one that took me away was the Facebook groups. How does a company who prides themselves on slipping the arm of the government decide to hide in plain sight? Not even that, but you can Google the term “free movies sites” and a list of sites appear with rankings, comments and social media accounts. I’m at a lost. Have they not learned anything from Limewire and other peer-to-peer sites over the years?
According to Torrent Freak, KAT is the top dawg. This is news I got just from search engines. If I, a normal person with no coding or cracking skills can get this information, imagine what trained experts at the Homeland Security can do with a little time on their hands.What’s funny is that each site warns you about copyright infringement and tells you to buy a VPN (Virtual Private Network) to mask your IP Address. How is that hiding from the government? You have to be one of the smartest/dumbest people in the world to have your illegal site advertised on such a public forum, offering tips to potential viewers on how to hide from the government. Like the government somehow forgot how to Google search.
It’s a cat and mouse game between the site owners and the government as they are proudly flaunting their success in their faces as they hide by switching proxy serves almost daily. But it’s not all fun and games when someone gets caught. There have been reports of millions in fines and imprisonment but it doesn’t just stop with the owners. You must remember that these sites are illegal and if you’re caught you will be subjected to the same harsh fines as the owners. The difference is, you can’t jump from proxy to proxy like they can, while most are based overseas, in America, movie studios, record and TV companies are now cracking down, hell your cable provider is now being forced to do so. I know a person who was caught by his provider, after a warning (in which he ignored, by giving him the show, time, date and his ip address of what he downloaded) they let him slide. The second time he was caught they sent him letter stating they would slow his internet speed down, almost to the point where he couldn’t get on Facebook due to the speed of his connection. After the third time, they just suspended his account in full.
Here is why I laughed in his face. He got caught downloading, was sent a letter telling him he was busted and he did it again. After reading said letter I guess it never occurred to him that he will be monitored. He thought he was slick by paying for a VPN service but yet downloaded it on the same ip address he was just busted for. There are people who get paid to just sit and watch others who’ve been warned. Why some still do it, I don’t know. I guess it’s the thrill of it all. Or maybe entertainment has changed so much that we have no choice now.
Movies are not the same. Prices have gone up considerably over the years to which a matinée is the price of a steak dinner. To add more salt to the wound, movies and music are trash and with companies like Hulu and Netflix streaming shows, the way we watch have changed.
I can’t say that I feel sorry for KAT and their followers, you must be smart about how you handle your business and being overseas they took the American Government for granted. Let this be a warning to all, be careful in which sites you frequent, they are watching your every move.