Months after his sudden disappearance, popular torrent provider YIFY, also known as YTS, broke his silence by hosting a Reddit AMA. The self-confessed "movie uploader and torrent site operator," revealed many things, among them the confirmation that his replacement, YTS.ag, operates without his consent.
Before his website was forced offline by the Hollywood group MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) in October 2015, YIFY or YTS lorded it over in the torrent scene and gained stature as the foremost provider of free movie files with decent quality in small size. The torrent player, perhaps, at one time even surpassed the popularity enjoyed by two sites - The Pirate Bay and KickassTorrents - today.
TorrentFreak reported that "YTS/YIFY was one of Hollywood's biggest arch-rivals," but the honor also made him the target of vigorous takedown moves coming from movie producers and authorities. They proved successful in the end as YIFY voluntarily shutdown his operation following what many believe as settlement with copyright holders.
The details of the settlement remain unknown and likely will be never known as TorrentFreak said that YIFY is legally prevented from discussing matters on the subject. But the former torrent provider hinted that he was asked to cease operation and he just dropped everything.
"As soon as someone properly asks you to stop, you stop and walk away from it. This is essentially how it all played out," YIFY told TorrentFreak.
YIFY also touched on the entities that took over from his operation and in the process gained significant popularity. Essentially, they are impostors (YTS.ag including), the torrent operator said, adding that "if someone comes up to me and asks about the fakes I tell them to stay away.
Is there a faint chance of resuming his operation? As the TorrentFreak report has noted, YIFY inked a deal with the MPAA and the safe bet is staying away from the torrent scene should be one of the explicit conditions. At any rate, YIFY is silent on the topic.
Of note is that YIFY uploads remain active and accessible via The Pirate Bay. Checking on TPB will show that the site is still indexing YIFY movie files that were uploaded until middle of October 2015 - a telling reminder that the once resilient torrent operator was eventually forced out of action.