Philippine authorities on Friday took down a torrent site offering files such as games and movies by seizing its domain name, but KickassTorrents apparently still operates via another domain, Kickass.to.
The Philippine government seized the KAT.ph domain of KickAssTorrents on copyright grounds, BitTorrent-oriented site TorrentFreak.com reported.
“The complaint alleges that the registrant of KAT.ph is violating intellectual property rights by making copyrighted music available for download to its users,” TorrentFreak.com quoted the dotPH registry as informing it.
It said the seizure of the domain stemmed from a complaint by the Philippine Association of the Recording Industry (PARI) and individual music labels.
PHL govt takes away major torrent site's domain | SciTech | GMA News Online
According to the complainants, KAT.ph was causing “irreparable damages” to the music industry due to its intellectual property rights violations, TorrentFreak said.
"With millions of visitors every day KickassTorrents (KAT) is one of the largest torrent sites on the Internet, trailing only behind The Pirate Bay," TorrentFreak said.
But the parties behind KickassTorrents appeared to still be in business as of Saturday morning - via the domain Kickass.to.
Temporary restraining order
The TorrentFreak report said the Philippine Intellectual Property Office issued a temporary restraining Order ordering dotPH to suspend the KAT.ph domain for 72 hours.
If the domain owners do not appeal the order signed by the IPO Bureau of Legal Affairs, the restraining order will become final.
TorrentFreak quoted dotPH as saying the Philippine music industry's complaints against KAT.ph dated back to 2011, but dotPH said at the time it would act upon a court order.
“dotPH was initially contacted by the complainants’ lawyers in December of 2011 with a demand to take down the domain, and dotPH agreed to cooperate if provided with an order from a court or appropriate authority,” TorrentFreak said.
But dotPH received such a restraining order earlier this week "and subsequently suspended kat.ph in compliance with IPO’s directive.”
US pressure?
TorrentFreak also said it "wouldn’t be much of a surprise if U.S. forces have also been applying pressure."
It cited the US government's Special 301 Report saying the Philippines remains on its copyright “watch list.” — ELR, GMA News
PHL govt takes away major torrent site's domain
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