After being unceremoniously shut down in July, Kickass Torrents has returned with a brand-new, fully functional torrent site that features its old design along with many of the former staff that made it the world's most popular torrent website. The new Kickass Torrents will now take on The Pirate Bay, ExtraTorrent, Torrentz2, 1337x, Rarbg and other sites that have flourished in its former wake.

Kickass Torrents' Shocking July Shutdown

The world of torrenting and file sharing was shocked earlier this year when Kickass Torrents was suddenly shut down in July of 2016 by the U.S. government, leaving a gaping hole in the torrenting options available. After all, Kickass Torrents had recently unseated The Pirate Bay as the no. 1 file sharing site worldwide. Following the Kickass Torrents shutdown, the options were further reduced when the Torrentz meta search engine and no. 3 torrent website in the world folded voluntarily, followed shortly thereafter by another top 10 site, Torrenthound.

Alternative mirrors and clones of Kickass Torrents soon appeared, including one which was really The Pirate Bay disguised in a Kickass Torrents skin, and others which merely reflected cached content culled from the site prior to its July shuttering.

Millions of file sharers soon migrated to other sites, helping boost The Pirate Bay back to the no. 1 position it had held for years before being displaced by Kickass. Other alternative sites like ExtraTorrent, 1337x and Rarbg all benefited by gaining former Kickass Torrents users, and posted impressive traffic gains. A new meta search engine almost identical to the defunct Torrentz –Torrentz2 – debuted to big traffic numbers as well.

Kickass Torrents Returns

Now, less than six months after its unfortunate demise, Kickass Torrents is back. The site has been resurrected by a team of former admins, moderators and forum members, who banded together after the shutdown and have created KATcr, a site identical in design to Kickass Torrents.

"The majority of our original Staff, Admins and Moderation team joined us after Kat.cr went down – which is something we're very proud of. This shows the loyalty, dedication and real love for KAT that we all share," said the new team, which also expressed confidence its activities were within the parameters of the law.

"KAT is a community-based forum and a torrent search engine. It's the heart of who we are and that will never change. Despite opinions to the contrary, torrents are not illegal and we do not host any content," they asserted, adding that they expect the original Kickass Torrents operators to be vindicated.

The new site has already proven so popular that it has been intermittently down due to overwhelming traffic on its servers, indicating that sites like The Pirate Bay, ExtraTorrent, Torrentz2, 1337x and Rarbg, which benefited from the former Kickass Torrents demise, could be in for some stiff competition now that their former no. 1 rival is back online.

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