KickAssTorrents down: US authorities seize domain name in move that could kill world’s biggest torrent site

The suspected founder of the site has been arrested and it could never go back online

Protesters demonstrate in Stockholm over the conviction of four men involved with The Pirate Bay filesharing site (FREDRIK PERSSON/AFP/Getty Images)

The world’s biggest torrent site has been taken offline and could never go back up.

US authorities have seized the KickAssTorrents domain name in an operation that also saw them arrest a man who is alleged to have run the file-sharing site.

The website was by many measures the biggest file-sharing website in the world. But it now appears that it could never return, since the US government now owns all of the domains that it operates under.

KickAssTorrents has regularly moved to different domains registered around the world, as authorities have cut off access to specific addresses. Those have included kickasstorrents.com, kat.ph, kickass.to, kickass.so and kat.cr, all of which have been run from places around the world.

Access to the site had already been blocked by courts in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy, Denmark, Belgium and Malaysia.

But now that the site has been taken offline it won’t be able to be accessed through VPNs, mirrors or any other workarounds.

The site’s net worth has been estimated at $54 million, according to the US government, which is based on the millions of dollars of advertising money that is generated through the website.