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KickassTorrent growth shows piracy is alive and well

Although services like Spotify, Netflix and Amazon Instant Video have gone a long way to make buying content legitimately an easy and affordable way to consume media, piracy is still alive and well. If there was any need for proof of that fact, KickassTorrents has just entered the top 70 of all websites for global traffic.

This isn't the highest rating that a torrent site has ever received from the Alexa ranking system. Mininova broke into the top 50 sites back in 2007 (as per TorrentFreak) and The Pirate Bay (TPB) was around the 70s mark for many years in the late '00s. Throughout that period though, KickassTorrents (KAT) was slowly building its share of the audience and it's continued to grow ever since.

In 2015 as the world's second most popular torrent site behind TPB, it was in the right place at the right time. When ThePirateBay was hit with domain issues that brought it months of downtime, KAT hoovered up the wayward downloaders to take the top spot and today it's by far the biggest and has become one of the largest communities and websites online.

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Maintaining that top spot hasn't been easy, but with a surprising uptime considering the targeting of it by law enforcement around the world, combined with a strong community around it, has kept torrenters coming back for more.

As much as these sorts of sites do help facilitate people to take part in illegal copyright infringement, they also promote sharing and clearly they offer something that the mainstream alternatives do not. Whether it's universal access to content, swift downloads or a community atmosphere around the content itself, sites like KAT are drawing in crowds for a reason.

Streaming services should try to emulate some of that, as they can never compete on price – all they can do is try to offer a comparable or better yet, superior service.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: While KitGuru doesn't condone piracy in any measure, for those of you that do take part in it, which sites or services do you use?

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6 comments

  1. Although services like Spotify, Netflix and Amazon Instant Video have gone a long way to make buying content legitimately an easy and affordable way to consume media, piracy is still alive and well. If there was any need for proof of that fact, KickassTorrents has just entered the top 70 of all websites for global traffic.

    This might be true in the UK, but here in the Netherlands we have to subscribe to 4 or 5 streaming services to view most (not even all) popular series… If Netflix or one of the other companies would cover more, a lot less people would download stuff here. So I’m not surprised at all.

  2. Me as a another guy from The Netherlands disagrees. If there is something that can’t be downloaded on kickasstorrent or any other torrent site (e.g video’s), then there is popcorn time. The reason people have a lot of netflix and spotify accounts here is that it’s included in phone, laptop and electricity provider subscriptions often.

  3. noo don’t bring kickass to light, i want it to stay as low profile as possible :p

  4. I have netflix, I have amazon prime, I have spotify premium, and I also now have a NowTV entertainment pass (specifically for Game of Thrones)

    But lets break it down, netflix’s content is old and constantly changing, which is great for diversity in content but bad if you want to rewatch something you watched on there last week or continue watching something you had to stop in the middle of. About the only reason I have a subscription anymore is for netflix original content.

    Amazon is the same thing as netflix except different content.

    Spotify can’t really complain but it doesn’t really beat the convenience of having the actual media files to be able to put onto various devices, it’s fine if you have a smartphone and can use spotify on that but good luck getting your tunes onto that £10 mp3 player. Spotify premium comes with a bunch of bells and whistles which I can’t even take advantage of which makes it annoying that they removed the cheaper spotify unlimited option which just removed ads, but what can you do.

    NowTV I bought an entertainment pass just so I could watch Game of Thrones when it airs instead of having to wait 2 hours before I could pirate it. NowTV’s billing model mirrors that of a pay tv service you would get from virgin or sky (surprise surprise considering it’s owned by sky) so if you want everything it’s not cheap, but £6.99/month so I can get GoT is fine for me, but it still has it’s issues.
    Flash. Flash flash flash flash f***ing flash why in 2016 is Sky putting out a product which uses flash instead of HTML5 video??? Ignoring that, the quality is just atrocious, especially if there’s heavy traffic like there is when GoT airs. The quality was so bad last night it couldn’t have been higher than 480p and in the end I stopped watching and waited for an HD copy I could pirate as there’s no way in seven hells that I’m going to watch episode 9 of GoT in 480p. My other main issue with NowTV is that with a lot of shows the available seasons is spotty at best and with the currently airing shows you’re lucky if you can go more than 1 season back. Right now the only available GoT episodes on NowTV are the last 5 episodes of the current season, if I want to go back and watch episode 3, which I paid a subscription fee to be able to watch, I can’t. I have to go pirate it.

    Legal services will never be able to match or beat piracy because their business models rely on restricting access to content.

  5. I prefer to get my content from Amazon prime or Netflix, but, especially with TV shows, they either take months/years to appear on Netflix or cost $3-4 an episode on Amazon for new seasons if they appear at all. I’ll pay $5 a month without a complaint, but paying almost as much for each episode? I’d rather torrent it. There are also some things that just aren’t available digitally in my area, such as Doctor Who, so even if I was willing to pay for it, that isn’t an option.

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