Not many people are fond of watching movies and TV shows online. The hassle of waiting for the buffering to complete is just too much. Many people prefer downloading what they plan to watch later to enjoy a smooth and buffer-free movie-watching experience.
If you are a movie freak and an avid lover of downloading movies or TV shows, the name of ‘KickAssTorrents’ must have rung a bell. It rose to popularity in 2008 and quickly got the crown of the most-visited torrent site around the world.
It even surpassed PriatesBay in its popularity and was a go-to website for all torrent-ing people. It used to encompass a wide array of media, which included but was not limited to, music, movies, games, or TV shows – all of which were for free, of course.
What Happened to KickAssTorrents?
If you were a keen user, you may already be aware of the fact that KickAssTorrents, (KAT for short) is no longer around. Many people who visited the website as a routine were devastated to not find it anywhere on the internet. Speculations rose, the panic was created, and many hearts were broken. If you still don’t know what happened to KickAssTorrents and you still wonder where it went, you’re going to get all your answers today!
The U.S. government took hold of the multiple domains associated with KickAssTorrents and the site went permanently offline in 2016. That’s where it went- offline!
The news made headlines in July 2016, when the Ukrainian site owner of the popular torrent-ing website, Artem Vaulin, was tracked down by the U.S. Government and arrested in Poland. The grounds for arrest were copyright infringements of over $5 million worth of digital material (which he put upon his website for free download) and money laundering.
In the past, the owner had already switched his domains multiple times to get past lawsuits and was already banned in multiple countries for the same reasons. But little did he know that destiny had other plans for him!
The most visited site had almost 50 million monthly users and the high traffic was mostly due to the free availability of illegal copyright movies, music, and other material, especially those which were already being screened on theatre or marketed in stores.
Many of you, by now, must already have gauged the gravity of this whole scenario, as this activity took a serious toll on the income of various artists and the people involved in its production. Violating copyright rules and regulations is never encouraged and it is always a better idea to look around for safer and legal alternatives.
Legal and Safe Alternates to KickAss Torrents
The most worrisome problem which hit many users right away was the need for a newer but safer alternate which eventually led to a frantic search for the same. People became a lot more conscious and aware of legalities associated with the content available online.
Not only this, they also got to know of the consequences one could face for accessing content illegally. Naturally, people started searching for legal torrent alternates that offered the convenience of KickAssTorrents but assured legality.
Many copycats and similar websites claiming themselves to be like KickAssTorrents popped up, but they either couldn’t continue for long or they couldn’t live up to their claims. Despite hundreds of websites offering free video streaming and direct downloads, none can actually compete with the power of torrent-ing, which is a lot more efficient and offers a faster and seamless experience.
Some torrent websites, which are still extremely popular like Piratesbay, limetorrent, and extratorrent can also be used to download free stuff legally but these websites still prioritize illegal content and it lies on the user’s part to distinguish between both.
Worry no more as we are here with a quick set of options for you to explore over your next weekend. Grab a cup of tea, lean back, and have a look around on some of the safer and legal alternatives for torrenting that we have listed below and find the ones which click the best with you.
Also, take note that we strongly discourage the download of copyright-protected material and only encourage the use of the vast amount of material that is license-free and which you have a right to access.
Internet Archive
This website is not the very updated newer version you might be hoping for and it is quite difficult to navigate around, but it sure holds a wealth of movies (encompassing every possible genre), games, audiobooks, music, and software, totally free to torrent.
It works with BitTorrent and is an excellent place, having millions of files to download. The cherry on top is that every single thing is legal. What more can you want?
LegitTorrents
LegitTorrents is also one of the biggest providers of thousands of free movies, games, music, software, books, and more. The great part is that they provide all this legally, so you need not worry about copyright or legal security issues. The website is simple and very user-friendly and is an excellent alternate to KickAssTorrents.
Public Domain Torrents
All classic film lovers, hold your horses as you are about to get freed from the constant scramble to search for classic movies amid a constant swarm of new ones. Public DomainTorrents is a treasure of thousands of Classic and B movies. It works with any BitTorrent and everything offered is totally free and comfortingly legal. Thank us later!
Vodo
Vodo is yet another amazing haven for TV shows and independent film lovers. It brings together video creators from all over the world on a single platform and provides free torrent streaming and free download. It’s a mini Netflix for you! It also offers event bundles with curated themed content packages. Simply register and enjoy the full site. You can also support your favorite artist and make some donations, but they are not compulsory and you can still enjoy the free downloads.
Miro Guide
With an in-built torrent and an extremely easy-to-use website, Miro Guide offers thousands of video and audio shows on an open independent platform. All the video podcasts and TV shows are a click away now, legal and free.
Vuze
Vuze is the updated version of the former popular bit torrent client, Azureus, and VuzeStudioHD Network is the content library for Vuze and it hosts an impressive collection of HD TV shows, comedy shows, news, music, movies, and Ted talks. With its clutter-free and upgraded user interface, Vuze also allows you to simply search for all the content from inside the vuzebittorrentsoftware. Simply watch a 30-second preview and if you fancy it, hit the download button, rate it or even share with your friends.
Jamendo
For music lovers, this is one great website. Jamendo claims to be the largest collection of music from all over the world and it sure does live up to its claim. It holds a staggering 600000+ songs from over 40000+ independent artists. That’s huge! All the content published on it is under a Creative Commons Licence. What’s more, is that they have an inbuilt radio and a Spotify-esque to play songs on-the-go of every genre you can think of. You can also search for various tracks and playlists. So what are you waiting for? Click and enter the world of music!
Bitlove
Having more than 1850 audio torrents and more than 222 videos, Bitlove is an excellent place to find neatly organized torrents. What’s even more interesting is that it allows to sort the contents based on language. Bitlove is a great website for audio and video podcasts and even allows you to share your own podcasts if you wish.
Etree
Ever thought of going to a concert of a relatively new artist or band? You must be in a fix whether getting the tickets would be worthwhile or not. Here is your chance to actually listen to the band doing a live concert on Etree and decide if you would rather attend the concert or better skip it altogether. Etree is all about recorded live concert videos to give you a feel about all the newer bands who are not yet famous enough to be on Spotify or iTunes yet.
Panda.cd
This one is another space music lovers should keep an eye on as Panda.cd is a torrent tracker that gives access to a vast music collection with the permission of the music artists. You need to register on the website first and then you can also share your music ventures on the website and also hear a preview before actually hitting the download button. It’s a really cool, time-saving feature we believe.
Games Updates
For all the gamers out there, you all must be aware of how difficult it is to get hold of patches, mods, and game upgrades for any game you purchased a while ago. This website offers all sorts of unofficial and official game patches and upgrades for old and new games globally. Gamers from all over the world actively contribute to the collection and if you want to contribute also, you can register yourself on the website.
Linux Tracker
Linux tracker offers a huge collection of various operating systems, all of which can be downloaded via torrent. It has been serving for 12 years and is devoted to providing legal Linux distros and their torrents. As the files are huge, Linux tracker is an excellent source to get them from and what’s even more appealing is that it provides all versions of all Linux distro for personal and public servers.
OpenOffice
Ever wanted to view and edit your MS office files on MS Word or wanted to tweak your presentation on PowerPoint or simply view and edit an excel sheet without spending too much on official MS Office licenses? Here is online software that can be downloaded via torrent from its website and which will allow you to perform all such tasks in a breeze. Of course, it won’t be as flavorsome as the official Ms. Office but well, what more can one ask for if the product is working exceptionally well for free?
Academic Torrents
An excellent legal and free resource for researchers, Academic Torrents offers a huge collection of datasets for researchers, which is made by researchers. It allows the distributed sharing of enormous datasets across its platform which results in blazing-fast download speed. All researchers should definitely give it a shot.
Closing Word
We hope that our comprehensive review of all the legal and free torrent-ing options was of great help to you. We’re pretty sure that some of you would already be scrambling off to explore them as fast as you can.
This list is not exhaustive and we are sure there would be many more exciting places yet to be explored, as the world of torrenting is huge. The simple point which should be kept in mind while downloading via torrent is that we should avoid copyright infringements at all costs, as not only the person who uploads the content but also the downloader can come under the spotlight of authorities for illegal content promotion.
Also, remember that torrent-ing is in itself a perfectly safe and legal business and such cases like KickAssTorrents and many others only tarnish the image of torrents. If taken care of, downloading torrents can be safe and fun. Happy Torrenting!
