Avid users and supporters of the infamous downloading and streaming site, Kickass Torrent also known as KAT, are hopeful of its return following news that it will resume operation in February with the release of Artem Vaulin. We hate to break it to you, but this seems unlikely considering the tight effort of the United States government to crackdown online piracy.

Vaulin, owner and operator of Kickass Torrent, was arrested in July after US authorities, with the cooperation of Apple, Facebook, and CoinBase, tracked him down in Poland. The domain site has been down ever since and recent reports indicated that its counterparts, The Pirate Bay and ExtraTorrent, have experiencing crackdown pressures.

The Pirate Bay is currently dealing with alleged blocking by ISPs in Sweden and banning from several giant browsers such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, and Opera. ExtraTorrent is also suffering from the loss of its three mirror sites. As Yibada reported, this means that right holders are uniting in pursuit of these torrent sites.

Similarly, Torrent Freak and newborn torrent sites from Ukraine and France have been purged. As the media outlet further noted, this is meant to send warnings to other domain site crossing copyright laws.

Considering that similar sites are under siege, the return of Kickass Torrent seems bleak despite the wide support for the petition calling for the immediate release of Vaulin and consequently, the continuation of the operation of the domain site.

In the previous weeks, the legal team of Vaulin defended that the indictment of their client is fatally flawed, as per TorrentFreak, because streaming is not defined as a felony under the US laws. Likewise, an act of sharing non-copyrighted torrent file was not considered a crime. As such, the prosecution has no base.

US Attorney Zachary Fordon responded that Kickass Torrent downplayed its role as a torrent site which was compared to the likes of flea markets that thrive on infringing. The detention of Vaulin was extended until February. Stay tuned for more updates!

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