Top 1 region in terms of web search volume for “kat.ph” is Pakistan，Philippines places the second. Tanzania, Mauritius, Ghana and Jamaica are the only 4 African countries occurred on the list, together with India, Bangladesh，Sri Lanka and Nepal, which are all the Asia countries. The top position of Pakistan, in a certain degree, reflects its supportive attitude towards what has been published on the website.

The city rank shows that Quezon City has the top web search volume. Other cities in the Philippines as Manila and Makati are in high position as well. Meanwhile, the rest of 7 cities are Lahore from Pakistan and Hyderabad，Calcutta，Bangalore，Mumbai，Chennai and Pune from India. “kat.ph” is highly recognized at home in the Philippines, yet it receives plenty of visit from other countries in Asia.“

KAT or KickassTorrents is a website founded in 2008, which provides torrent search engine and is operated by a dedicated team spread all over the globe. As is highly recognized at home in the Philippines, kat.ph” takes pride in providing a large and friendly community, which is rewarded with the exceptionally vast web search volume compared with that of other cities.

What happened to Kick Ass Torrents? After Thursday afternoon when Torrent Freak confirmed that the kat.ph domain had gone down, Kick Ass Torrents devotees were left wondering what happened to their .ph site. As Torrent Freak wrote, "A couple of hours the ago the site [kat.ph] simply disappeared from the Internet with the site's operators departing with a brief 'We have an unexpected maintenance' message on Twitter. All emails to KAT's operators are currently bouncing due to what appears to be an issue with their KAT.ph domain. 'Destination .PH Domain does not exist or has expired,' is the message we get in return."


SEE ALSO: More Info On Kick Ass Torrents

On June 14, it was confirmed by Torrent Freak that Kick Ass Torrents' kat.ph domain had been seized by the Government of the Philippines due to copyright issues. "The seizure is the result of a complaint filed by the Philippine Association of the Recording Industry and several individual music labels. The complaint stated that KickassTorrents was causing 'irreparable damages' to the music industry, and a local court agreed to suspend the site's domain," Torrent Freak wrote.

Kick Ass Torrents even tweeted out, "We had to drop Kat.ph as a part of our global maintenance and move to Kickass.to. This was a hard decision, but it was necessary for the further development of KickassTorrents. Stay tuned for more news."

Previously in May, Kick Ass Torrents had tweeted about undergoing massive maintenance. "The time has come and KAT is having the largest server maintenance ever. We're reworking huge parts of the website and optimizing things under the hood to improve your KAT experience and add some tech potential for our awesome upcoming features. Naturally this is a difficult process and some parts of the website might not be working correctly right now. The maintenance will be finished by Monday, so please hold your bug reports for a little while. Thank you!"

SEE ALSO: Kickass Torrents Offline: Where To Watch Free Movies Online Now That Kickasstorrents And Kat.ph Are Down

The dotPH registry told Torrent Freak that the complaint alleged that kat.ph was violating intellectual property rights by making copyrighted music available to download by its users. Now Kickass Torrents aka kickasstorrents file sharing website  has apparently changed servers after the kat.ph domain was seized. After the kickasstorrents site went down, other sites came popping up, claiming to be the new kickasstorrents proxy. These new kickasstorrents could be detrimental to fans composters since often these fake sites can transfer malware and viruses on to visitor's computers. A similar situation happened when the site Movie2K went down a few weeks ago. Kickass.to is currently Kick Ass Torrents new kat.ph torrent site. You can download movies, music, video games and TV shows.

So where can fans go for alternate torrents options just in case?

SEE ALSO: Movie2k, Letmewatchthis.ch Offline While Movie4k Still Streaming: Concerns Arise That Free Movie Alternative Could Be Dangerous

(NOTE: iDesignTimes in no way condones the illegal viewing or distributing of copyrighted material and as such recommends for viewing free movies online.)

1.     OpenCulture.com

2.     Archive.org

3.     FineMoviesOnline.net

4.     Legalmoviesonline.org 

5.     Documantis.com

6.     Emol.org

7.     Google Video

8.     GodTube.com

SEE ALSO: Where Can You Watch Movies Post-Movie2K?

Although it is unknown if kat.to will suffer the same fate as kat.ph, it is a likely scenario. As long as these and other sites, such as Movie2K keep moving servers, piracy will continue to be a problem for a very long time. As one reader wrote recently,

"It's to bad that the site cant get legal rights to the material that it
distributes. That's why I stay away from this type of sites. I have a
wireless router and I had my internet shut down because some body was
pirating something very illegal with my wireless without me knowing. If I
were you I would stay away from these sites because they can trace your
location by your IP address rate to your back door. No joke I have
really seen it happing. NOT FUN I tell ya because I care." - darkluckdragon

It appears a recent Kickasstorrents domain, Kat.ph, went down Thursday as fans of the torrent site began searching the web for answers to what happened to kat.ph, why it went down and if or when the kat.ph domain would go back online. Though the domain kat.ph has in fact been seized, it appears a proxy server is already up and running.

Where To Watch Free Movies Now That KickassTorrents Is Down!


Kat.ph Disappears After Maintenence Note Is Posted


At first it seemed Kickasstorrents' Phillipines domain might simply be undergoing some maintenance, but as time went on, it appeared more likely that something serious had taken place. On Thursday afternoon, Torrent Freak confirmed that the kat.ph domain had in fact gone down.

As Torrent Freak, a website devoted to all things BitTorrent related, wrote on Thursday, June 13, 2013,

"A couple of hours the ago the site [kat.ph] simply disappeared from the Internet with the site's operators departing with a brief "We have an unexpected maintenance" message on Twitter. All emails to KAT's operators are currently bouncing due to what appears to be an issue with their KAT.ph domain. 'Destination .PH Domain does not exist or has expired,' is the message we get in return."


We have an unexpected maintenance. KAT will be online very soon.

— kat.ph (@kickasstorrents) June 13, 2013

The post goes on to say that when inspecting if Kickastorrrents' kat.ph domain was indeed having a problem, at first none seemed readily evident. After taking a closer second look, however, Torrent Freak came to the conclusion something more must have happened and that the Kat.ph domain was in fact down.

"On closer inspection we can see that instead of pointing to the usual IP addresses associated with the site, currently the KAT.ph domain points to an IP address range associated with DotPH, the official registrar for the Philippines where KickAss registered their domain. We cannot say with absolute certainty what this means, but it seems likely that KAT may be experiencing issues with DotPH over their domain. It is feasible that the domain has been reclaimed by the registry although on what grounds and for how long is impossible to predict"

Later in the day, it was confirmed that Kickasstorrents Philippine domain kat.ph, had in fact been seized. Here was the message left by Kickasstorrent admin.

"As some of you know, kat.ph doesn't work. Please use https://kickass.to (it's safe). The kat.ph has been taken down cause philippines suddenly seized our domain"

(NOTE: iDesignTimes in no way condones the illegal viewing or distributing of copyrighted material and as such recommends for viewing free movies online, make sure to check the free legal website listings we have here.)

Like a number of other websites that have undergone scrutiny for their copyright infringing actions, it appears Kickasstorrents' new place of refuge will be in Tonga. This is where the domain .to is derived. Tonga is an archipelago of 150 islands and islets, 40 of them inhabited. The oldest monarchy in the South Pacific, the Kingdom of Tonga has a population of 104,227 inhabitants.


MPAA Targets Kickasstorrents Aling With Numerous Other "Online Notorious Markets"


The Kickasstorrent site has long been a site targeted by organizations such as the MPAA for its violation of copyright laws and illegal distributing of copyrighted material. In 2011, the MPAA listed Kickasstorrents as one of 20 "online notorious markets" along with well-known sites such as the PirateBay, PutLocker, MegaUpload and Movie2k. The MPAA noted that the site had a "commercial look and feel that could deceive users into thinking it is legitimate." The United States Trade Representative (USTR) later copied this description in its overview of sites that are "notorious for infringing activities."


After these reports were released, sites like Kickasstorrents quickly looked for ways to get around eminent shut down by moving their servers to overseas locations where the US has no control. Up until recently, the Philippines has become a region where many popular torrent sites have moved their domains, including Torrentz.com and Demonoid. It appears, however, that new places of refuge will need to be found.

Kickassstorrents is not the only copyright infringing website to recently find itself in some hot water. In late May, many online movie watchers were dismayed to find a favorite source of online movies, Movie2k, had also gone down due to presumed pressure from the MPAA. Though the site soon also found an alternative proxy, it is very likely both that site and the new Kickasstorrents proxy are being watched carefully and could see shutdown in the future.