The essential ingredients for a KickassTorrents comeback appear to be in full effect - the original site admin, uploaders and moderators have resurrected the torrent site via the KATcr.co and the same crew is gearing up to continue on with a KAT tradition. On March 30, the group will scream to the world "Happy Torrents Day!"
The defiant annual celebration will be the sixth for KAT and the first time minus alleged KickassTorrents founder Artem Vaulin, who remains detained in Poland while awaiting extradition to the United States. But KATcr seems unfazed, TorrentFreak reported, adding that the torrent operators are in high spirit as they enjoined KAT followers to "to share as many torrents as possible, more every year and celebrate our freedom to do so."
Sharing appears to be the driving force behind Happy Torrents Day, and the people running KATcr have all the reasons to celebrate. So far the KATcr team has successfully gathered together the backbone of the KickassTorrents operations - the so-called super users, uploaders and KAT community members - to restart the site from scratch.
When KATcr.co first went live last December 2016, the first intention was to provide a forum for millions orphaned by the abrupt disappearance of KickassTorrents, and it helped that what was put up has the KAT look and feel. Eventually, free contents downloads were added and unsurprisingly the site started to pick up.
TorrentFreak said KATcr now counts millions as regular visitors and traffic is consistently increasing. The ultimate goal, according to KATcr's Mr. Gooner, is to reach the level of KickassTorrents prior to its July 2016 takedown by the U.S. government. KAT was regarded as the King of Torrents before Vaulin was arrested and the site's multiple domains were seized by U.S. federal authorities.
Mr. Gooner said the constant dream for KATcr from Day One is to return to the old glory that KickassTorrents was. "Right now we are focusing on getting back to where we were. We fully support our founder and expect him to be released. If that happens quickly, we will go back to full site immediately," the team representative told TorrentFreak.
At the same time, KATcr made clear the new site is not a successor to KickassTorrents and can therefore exist and operate independent of KAT and Vaulin. "Kickass Torrents was never run by the founder, it was always run by Team Kickass, our Super Users, Translators, uploaders and community members," Mr. Gooner said.