Popular torrent sites Kickass and the Pirate Bay are back up once again after being put down on separate occasions by authorities.

Kickass torrents went down back in February 9 after the Somalian domain was seized by authorities. However, the site went back online the next day with with all torrents and comments still intact.

Instead of the previous domain used (kickass.so), the site now makes use of kickass.to which is a Tongan web address. The site has been known to move from one url to another including the Philippines under kat.ph. The Philippine url is no longer accessible.

For Pirate Bay, the cat-and-mouse game continues as well. After being shut down in December by authorities, the site has managed to get back online. And with all that comes an interesting question on who is really behind the domain shutdowns.

Despite valiant efforts and an aggressive drive to shut down torrent sites, it seems that the people behind the sites have managed to come up with a backup plan just as fast as they get put out of temporary commission.

On Feb. 24, the site reportedly went down again, redirecting to themobilebay.org, which has an SSL certificate that does not work or load.

Domain name banning has been a resort but the thing is that Kickass and/or the Pirate Bay seem to have found ways to avoid the law or at least delay them from disabling site access.

With all that said, it seems a lot of things are coming into play. While the authorities are trying to keep tabs and ban domain names which the sites are using, such is not done in a snap. This is best exemplified with the case of Somali.

The Somali government took action but not as swiftly like other nations. The ban was indeed made but the time frame allowed the sites to find alternative site addresses during the waiting time. With their best efforts, it remains to be seen on how authorities and groups are able to completely shut down torrent sites and if that would even be possible.