14 DAY TRIAL // If for various reasons you're forced to resort to online piracy to watch your favorite Hollywood releases and US TV shows, in the past week you may or may not have noticed some interesting things that are happening in the world of P2P, torrents, and scene releases.
We've previously detailed in depth the internal power struggle the Popcorn Time's developers went through, and the eventual service shutdown, confirmed by one of the project's lead developers. We've also put a short list of alternatives if you were looking for a Popcorn Time replacement.
YIFY (YTS) has been down for more than a week
But besides Popcorn Time, another service seems to have mysteriously gone under at about the same time. That service is YIFY (rebranded as YTS), a movie release group that in the past few years has become Hollywood's main nemesis and the prime source for HD-quality movie releases.
According to multiple online reports, the group's website located at yts.to has been down for over a week, and it seems to have gone down at about the same time, which is when the first signs of an internal struggle appeared inside the Popcorn Time team. It is worth mentioning that Popcorn Time uses YIFY torrents to provide their users with streamed content.
TorrentFreak reports that YIFY's leader stopped answering emails from them, the Popcorn Time team, and other torrent portal administrators during the same period, and their website is now serving a blank white page, the primary clue to what happens when an unprotected and low-resource server gets hit by a crippling DDoS attack.
Additionally, new YIFY movie releases have also stopped coming out at around the same date, even via other sources, which may also mean that the group's members appear to have stopped their activity based on internal orders.
Kickass Torrents, not down, but not much safer either
While not all people visit YIFY's website for new releases, most users do visit Kickass Torrents, the Internet's biggest torrent portal, even surpassing The Pirate Bay.
Although Kickass is not down per se, the website has been flagged as carrying malware by Firefox and Google Chrome, warnings that emerged at the start of last week.
With all of these happening almost simultaneously, it seems like the MPAA may have found a way to go after online pirates. Fortunately, it's not. This is all just weird coincidence.
Since reports have it that the Kickass Torrents' website is the victim of a malvertising campaign, if you're willing to ignore the Chrome and Firefox security warnings, don't forget to go on the site with an ad blocker installed, so at least the malicious ads won't load.
Either way, the good ol' Pirate Bay is still up.
