KAT was one of my favorite torrent sites and this came as a shocking news!
For many Steemers, undoubtedly it made life a lot easier as well as interesting! I've been getting my fix of the old House M.D. tv show off late and managed to watch a couple of marvel series such as The Flash in the past few months.
I'm certain many of you are surprised just as I am about this development! If you've never been on a torrent site you are an internet noob. If you've downloaded a commercial product off the web without paying for it (including saving YT videos) and prefer to have KAT and similar torrent sites shut down; you are a hypocrite!
Artem Vaulim will pay for 'a crime' committed by hundreds of millions of internet/p2p users across the world.
The current update is that:
ARTEM VAULIN, 30, of Kharkiv, Ukraine, allegedly owns and operates Kickass Torrents, or KAT, a commercial website that since 2008 has enabled users to illegally reproduce and distribute hundreds of millions of copies of copyrighted motion pictures, video games, television programs, musical recordings and other electronic media, collectively valued at more than $1 billion, according to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago. KAT receives more than 50 million unique monthly visitors and is estimated to be the 69th most frequently visited website on the Internet, according to the complaint.
Read the full report on Justice.gov
What we've learn't about p2p related arrests in the past?
- In the past we've seen this happen with IsoHunt which was shut down but sprung back up soon after.
- Even ThePirateBay was taken down but the proxies are back up and keeping the tradition alive.
- BT Junkie is gone for good.
- Recently YIFI ran into trouble.
Will Kat.cr spring back up again?
For all we know it might! Or the Feds may get Verisign to seize the domain for them. In anycase KAT is down right now and I'm unable to access the proxies myself. You can check the status of the proxies here! —It didn't work for me though.
KAT ignored DMCA Warnings
There were many complaints filed by American studios and were all shot down in the following manner.
Greetings,
Your request has been reviewed, but cannot be processed due to one (or
more) of the following reasons:
1 The Claim wasn't written in English language.
2 You provided no evidence showing that you are the copyright holder
or that you are acting on behalf of the copyright holder;
3 You provided no evidence showing that the content is legally
copyrighted;
4 There were more then [sic] 30 torrents mentioned in the Claim email;
5 Your content is hosted on a different website.
Please, make sure to fulfill all the conditions mentioned above before
sending a claim.
You can find more detailed information regarding the DMCA email
layout via the following article - https://kat.cr/dmca/
Respectfully,
KAT team
Most websites wouldn't have lasted a few weeks with DMCA complaints filed against them but KAT stayed put for years!
Why KAT?
Probably because KAT until January 2016, hosted their servers in Chicago, Illinois and a Canadian hosting service which HSI and IRS were able to track down using MLAT.
Feds are also perhaps sending a message out to other p2p networks that they are coming to get them!
What is the future of BitTorrent?
As of today, using BitTorrent is the best way to share media across the world for most of the masses. There maybe other ways including the dark web where legal and illegal transfers of media/content as well as transactions may occur. But for the rest of us who prefer to use the torrents for simple things may have to look elsehwere.
WebTorrent
The technology that enables all this is called WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication). WebRTC was standardized by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to support browser-to-browser applications like voice calling and video chat without browser plugins.
You can read more from the founder of WebTorrent here.
This seems like a good option and you can read more information on their FAQ: WebTorrent FAQ
Top 5 BitTorrent sites for 2016
If you thought KAT going down is the end of it all, there's still hope! It's hard enough for for government agencies to track down the owners much less bring the site down at their whim and fancy, everytime! You may want to consider the following websites if you need to download your files from torrents.
If you prefer to stream tv series online:
Who is the next target?
I've been a p2p user since Napster, Kazaa, Limewire and Vuze days and some of these were breakthrough at their time. While the governments can hamper growth of p2p file-sharing I don't think it is entirely possible to tear it down! Maybe the next target for the US government could be any of the websites I've mentioned in the top list which by any means aren't the only p2p sites out there!
With global upload and download speeds increasing and newer methods of sharing becomes viable, peer-to-peer sharing will remain for a long time to come!
Where does Steemit stand in all of this!
This is what 
Steemit.com will have to filter illegal content or risk being shutdown all together
those who upvote illegal content are effectively paying for bootleg material.
a. this makes the crime and penalties much more severe for both parties
b. this makes the poster and voters much bigger targets for lawsuits.
All of that said, there is absolutely nothing stopping a decentralized downloadable app from displaying this kind of information. This is a prime example of where a separate currency dedicated to this job might make more sense than building this on Steem. For starters, a large number of steemians will downvote illegal content whereas a dedicated platform would presumably be held by those who value that kind of sharing.
You can read more comments from 
A decentralized downloadable app might be a good option. I'm not aware of any at the moment. However, if someone here builds one, i'd be happy to try it out.