There has been something of a clamp down on torrent sites around the world in recent years, but that doesn’t mean they're going away. It may be slightly harder to get a torrent fix these days, but where there's a will there's a way. One of the biggest names still on the scene is KickassTorrents, and it has now ventured into new territory by starting a release group of its own.
Over the last few days, the group -- under the handle KATRG -- has been pushing out numerous Blu-ray rips and screeners. There's no sign of Star Wars: The Force Awakens just yet (although it's surely not long before it makes an appearance), but there are some big releases out there including The Hateful Eight, The Peanuts Movie, and The Revenant.
There are already a high number of well-respected release groups in existence, and new-comers are usually few and far between. But with a big name like KickassTorrents associated with it, this could be one of the few that manages to creep to public attention. Like the Pirate Bay, Kickass Torrents is one of the stalwarts of the torrenting scene, surviving endless takedown attempts by law enforcement agencies.
In setting up a release group, the site is kicking things up a notch. Not content with courting controversy by providing access to torrents, by putting its name on specific releases KickassTorrents is virtually pulling down its pants and baring its behind at authorities. The site is waving a big red flag, shouting "come find us!" but, ultimately, it is torrent users who will benefit.
As noted by Torrent Freak, KATRG's releases have already been noticed by copyright holders, resulting in takedown requests -- which have been complied with. The site provides a way around this, though:
KickassTorrents is offering a solution to this problem. It’s been in operation for some time, but essentially it remains possible to download releases even after they have been taken down from the site.
In respect of KATRG this is achieved by a forum thread which lists all of the group’s releases along with their hashcodes. Should any be taken down, users are invited to enter hashes into another search engine which then provides the download in question.
KickassTorrents is a brand, and it is keen to maintain its reputation. The sources of the movies are not (understandably) being made public, but with its name to protect, the quality of releases -- including though re-encoded from other sources -- is likely to remain high.
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