HomeAlso just like London buses. After the super busy week last week, this one is super quiet but for one, earth-shattering story (more on that later). But I’ve used the news lull to good effect, playing a bit of Pokemon Go, and deciding to launch my new Pokemon Go website, Help Me Poké (that’s Poké as in Pokey, not poke as in coke). Yes, I’m enthusiastically jumping on that particular bandwagon.
But more than just trying to latch on to the latest hype, Pokemon Go is actually confusingly complex for a game that doesn’t have a tutorial, or even a proper in-game how-to-play guide. I’m constantly figuring new things out, things that should have been made obvious via a tutorial, which is why I thought it would be a good idea to get a help site up and running. You can have a quick read of my Quick Start Guide, and that will get you playing Pokemon Go like a real master in no time (disclaimer: not intended to be a factual statement).
Oh yes, the news.
KAT is gone!
KickassTorrents is no more. Seizures, arrests and upcoming extraditions all lead to the simple conclusion, KAT is not coming back again. While mirrors, clones and fake sites will appear, the actual KickassTorrents, along with all of its prized data, is now in the hands of authorities. It’s Ukrainian owner, Artem Vaulin, has been arrested in Poland and now face extradition to the U.S. where he will be charged with massive copyright infringement, to the tune of more than one billion US dollars.
Worst yet, with authorities in possession of user data, downloaders, uploaders and moderators on the site could find themselves in deep trouble.
So how did the world’s biggest piracy site end up like this? The site’s downfall, it appears, was largely down to the site not learning the lessons of previous take-downs, including the Megaupload take-down. Out of all the places the site could have hosted its servers, some of the site’s servers were hosted in the U.S., allowing investigators there a way in to the operation. Worse yet, the servers that were in the U.S. were KAT’s email servers, and investigators from the Department of Homeland Security managed to clone the server’s drives without alerting the operators of KAT. This along with secret seizures of Canadian servers from web host Netelligent, provided them with information about who was running the site.
The killer blow was dealt by domain registrar GoDaddy of all people. The owner of KAT, Artem Vaulin, apparently registered domain names in his own name, before the site became a hit and before Vaulin would become a target of law enforcement. He also previously used Gmail accounts to communicate site related matters.
In short, it appears that the operators of KAT, including its owner, failed to take proper precautions in order to protect their identity and data. Too much of their data was stored in U.S. servers, or used U.S. services that investigators could have easy access to, and even when they tried to remain anonymous, via BitCoins, the company that handled Vaulin’s BitCoin exchanges gladly handed over user data to investigators. And you guessed it, Vaulin’s choice of BitCoin exchange was a company located in the U.S.
As a result of these careless actions, Vaulin now faces the possibility of spending the next few decades in a U.S. prison.
As for the future of piracy, as in who will step in for KAT, it’s worth noting that The Pirate Bay is still up and running (they appear to be wise to the fact that one shouldn’t rely on U.S. services), and who knows what other site will step up to fill the void. Whether they are willing to take the risk, now that KAT, and previously YIFY, have all been taken down in massive global law enforcement efforts, is anyone’s guess.
Is Netflix in trouble? Probably not. Subscriber growth is slowing, maybe down to the recent price hike (due to the ending of grandfathered plans), or maybe because both Hulu and Amazon are stepping up their game (the former with more content, especially movies, and the latter with its standalone offering). And while the company continues to deny that saturation has been reached in the U.S, one cannot help but feel that anyone who wants Netflix, already has Netflix (even if they’re just leeching it off someone else).
That’s it for this slow week. Be sure to check out Help Me Poké if you have the time and interest. See you next week.
