KickassTorrents offline: File-sharing torrent site moves domain after Somalia ban

KickassTorrents, the world's most visited torrent site, has been forced to switch its domain after its Somalian registry forced it offline.

The Kickass.so domain went down on Monday, 9 February, however an older domain registered to administrators in Tonga (.to) is still working at the time of writing.

The .so registry seized the KickassTorrents domain, presumably after receiving complaints from copyright holders that the site was being used to conduct piracy.

The seizure comes almost exactly two months after the popular torrent site The Pirate Bay was taken down following a raid by Swedish police.

The Pirate Bay has since returned to its original domain, together with several replica sites. Web analysts have previously claimed that raids and takedowns do not have any significant affect on illegal file sharing.

"This is similar to the take down of marketplaces (like the Silk Road)," Benjamin Ali, intelligence investigator at dark web monitoring company Centient, told IBTimes UK in December.

"It doesn't really have an affect in the larger scheme of things, there are plenty of back ups to the website as before the site was taken down anyone could download a backup.

"Also the users running the site have all ready said previously that there are contingency plans in place if anything happens. Even if it doesn't come back online there are hundreds of other sites that can be used so people can just move to these."