Torrentfreak reports that KickassTorrents has lost access to the Kickass.so domain, the .SO registry having banned it. The popular torrent site has moved several times over the years to different domains for similar reasons, the .so domain being the most recent.
The Somalian domain of the most-visited torrent site on the Internet is now listed as "banned" by the .SO registry, forcing the site's operators to find a new home.
While KickassTorrents is down for the moment, it is expected that the site will move its operation to a new domain name later today, or revert back to Kickass.to.
The article also states in a few further updates that KickassTorrents has indeed reverted to kickass.to and is again operational, however, I've just tried visiting it myself at this writing and it still seems to redirect to the now inaccessible .so domain.
(Score: 5, Funny) by doublerot13 on Tuesday February 17 2015, @03:45PM
We all know Somalia won't stand for pirates.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 17 2015, @03:48PM
Bribes and ransom is okay though.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by paulej72 on Tuesday February 17 2015, @04:01PM
The .so domain is run by a Japanese registrar. It seems that they are the ones policing the domain rather than the Somalians.
Team Leader for SN Development
(Score: 5, Interesting) by RobotLove on Tuesday February 17 2015, @04:23PM
I had trouble resolving to kickass.to a few days ago, mainly because it was redirecting to kickass.so (which is definitely not working). I used https://kickass.to [kickass.to] and then everything was fine. Hopefully that helps people.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by caseih on Tuesday February 17 2015, @04:39PM
Seems like with certain organizations acting as judge, jury, and executioner in many cases, not just torrent cases, one would think that alternative DNS systems would become a bit more popular, even if it required some user modification of their operating system. In fact torrent users are often have few qualms about exposing themselves to risky pirated binaries, so running an installer that modifies the DNS settings should be no problem.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by CRCulver on Tuesday February 17 2015, @05:08PM
Do they? I've torrented films, books, and music for years now, reaching into the hundreds of gigabytes a month, and I've never once downloaded a binary. On the torrent communities I'm active in, downloadable software is definitely a small niche hidden among the much more active sharing of media. Certainly some people enjoy getting certain software applications for free, but it's probably not as prevalent as you think.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 17 2015, @05:30PM
I pirate turbotax every year, been doing it for over a decade.
But I run it in a VM without any network connection and then I delete the VM once I've printed the forms out on paper.
I pirate other things, usually versions of Windows. But again, they get their own VMs and aren't used in high risk ways.
I'm not a gamer, but if I were, I would only use pirated games since the DRM on the official versions would infuriate me.
One thing I always do is never use a recently created torrent, only ones that have been around for at least a few weeks, preferably months, and for which there are no negative comments on the forums where the torrent was posted. My experience is that the scammers are pretty ham-fisted and get called out real quick. Of course someone who is both clever and only interested in sowing chaos rather than exploiting for profit might make it past my precautions. But its a risk I can live with.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday February 17 2015, @11:00PM
Ahhh... you mean that mean organization that can only afford three letters? ;)
One loophole with your VM approach is breaches accomplished using compromised CPU chip masks and device controllers as a another article today shows.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 18 2015, @07:18AM
For the rest of us, we don't have to run faster than the bear, we just have to run faster than the average person ;).
(Score: 3, Funny) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday February 17 2015, @10:27PM
Create kickass.cx
1) sounds like "kick ass sex"
2) All search results return goatse.
3) profit.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by kaszz on Tuesday February 17 2015, @11:02PM
So how long time before this goes to TOR onion or some other P2P domain system?
In the end this all about commonly agreed upon address labels. The default DNS system isn't unreplacable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 18 2015, @07:32AM
Or someone could create a DNS service/app that can ignore/rollback such "updates". ISPs could block all the IP addresses used by the service, but such a service is not necessarily illegal.
The real issue is I doubt enough people will pay enough to keep such a service running.
So maybe apk can chime in with his host files thing ;).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 18 2015, @07:37AM
Just go to one of those sites that keep track of IP addresses and changes:
http://myip.ms/info/search/1/stxt/kickass.so/k/1788129903/kickass_so.html [myip.ms]
http://myip.ms/info/whois/78.138.99.144/k/2220012235/website/kickass.to [myip.ms]
Then update your hosts file accordingly (apk you there? ;) ).
On recent windows you can create a shortcut with:
%windir%\system32\notepad.exe c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
Then run as administrator and edit.
(Score: 2) by Techwolf on Wednesday February 18 2015, @05:01PM
I hate this. This is the second tv show site that had to change domain name and qbittorrent has no way to edit the URL in the RSS feeds. Does anyone know a why to edit the URL in the RSS feeds so one can just change it without loosing all the data with it? Right now, have to create all NEW feeds and that looses all history, resulting in may new downloads that are dups.