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When it comes to obtaining and placing unauthorized content online, so-called ‘release groups’ are what makes the world of piracy tick.

Most closely associated with the ‘Scene’ during the 2000s, release groups now come in all shapes and sizes, from elite groups at the top of the piracy pyramid through to one-man bands seeking kudos from the masses.

Another area closely associated with release groups are those affiliated with both private and public torrent sites. These can take many forms. Some are created by site members keen to gain recognition while furthering their chosen site’s brand, while others are operated by sites themselves.

While The Pirate Bay has never had an overt release group, other sites in the public space certainly have. RARBG, for example, has a release group operating in its name and ETRG (ExtraTorrent Release Group) provides a similar function for that site.

The latest site to jump on the release group bandwagon is KickassTorrents (KAT). Currently the largest torrent site on the Internet, KAT is certainly not short of visitors but it appears that the site believes it can better serve the public with the provision of a site-branded release group.

At the time of writing the group, which appeared around a week ago and operates from the three-year-old username KATRG, currently has 21 releases. In addition to Blu-ray and web rips, KATRG is also offering the latest Oscar DVD screeners to leak online including Room, Brooklyn and The Peanuts Movie.

KAT administrator Mr. Black informs TF that KATRG is being operated by a well-known encoder, whose identity will not be made public.

“Having a famous encoder with us that has such massive experience in knowing what the users want helps to gain attention and can only bring some good things to KickassTorrents,” Mr. Black says.

It’s worth noting that KATRG is not the original source of any of the titles uploaded so far. Instead, the group re-encodes Scene releases. That being said, lack of originality never hurt the image of YIFY, for example, who mostly re-encoded and then re-branded Scene releases.

But of course, just like any other torrent, KATRG releases are vulnerable to takedown by copyright holders. The image below shows that a blu-ray rip of The Bad Education Movie only clocked 98 downloads before being removed.

Nevertheless, KickassTorrents is offering a solution to this problem. It’s been in operation for some time, but essentially it remains possible to download releases even after they have been taken down from the site.

In respect of KATRG this is achieved by a forum thread which lists all of the group’s releases along with their hashcodes. Should any be taken down, users are invited to enter hashes into another search engine which then provides the download in question.

At the moment KATRG releases aren’t particularly popular with downloaders which is not that unusual for a relatively unknown group. However, just like releases from YIFY (and aXXo before him), KATRG’s efforts will eventually become trusted and with that will come popularity.

Also, since the release group name is also being spread around other sites, it effectively becomes free and effective advertising for KickassTorrents – not that the site really needs any more exposure.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

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Without proper moderation any torrent site will turn into a swamp of fake files and malicious content.

This became painfully apparent earlier this year when The Pirate Bay was left unmoderated, and a similar situation is now taking place at 1337x.to.

The site, which is one of the most visited torrent sites on the Internet, has built up a strong community in recent years. As with most other sites the day-to-day operations are managed by admins and moderators, who volunteer their free time to dealing with spam and other inappropriate content.

After a redesign, however, the staffers have grown impatient with the site’s owner who failed to respond to various complaints. One of the most pressing issues is a security hole which allows others to hijack user accounts.

“The new design is full of bugs, leaving users unprotected and vulnerable to attacks. The owner has refused to fix those problems creating dissension in the ranks,” former 1337x moderator ‘The Ghost’ informs TF.

The vulnerabilities allow outsiders to take over the accounts of regular users and post all sorts of spam.

“What would happen, is somebody would reply to a comment that had a script injected. Once they replied, their account got hijacked and started uploading infected torrents,” The Ghost says.

The above is just one example, according to the moderator. These and other bugs caused a lot of problems for the moderation crew as well as the users. However, they reportedly remain in place today.

Since the owner has been very unresponsive, all active moderators and admins have decided to step down. They were already paying for the server rent and the 1337x domain names, which will likely be forwarded to the new home.

Visitors who access the old forum URL (1337x.net) are now redirected to the new home at leetxtorrents.org, where a new forum was created with a copy of the database.

Another “former” 1337x staffer Mustangx, who owns the original .com and .org domains, confirms the staff exodus and says that they are working on a new torrent site as well. The staffers don’t have access to the old code, so they have to start anew.

“We have a team working on an entirely new site at the moment. We hope to have it ready for the new year,” Mustangx says.

In recent days the owner of the original 1337x reappeared again. However, many staffers believe that it’s too late to make things right, although it hurts to leave their old home behind.

“Nobody likes the idea of just leaving the old site sitting there but it doesn’t have an off button. Kind of like leaving a claymore mine lying around the internet,” The Ghost concludes.

At the time of writing the old 1337.to site remains operational, but the domain may be redirected in the future as well.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.