Watching pirated motion pictures in your iPhone simply received a bit of more durable. After climbing the charts of Apple’s App Store, the fashionable Kimi app, with its assortment of bootlegged motion pictures, has simply disappeared. Pretending to be a spot-the-difference vision-testing recreation, the broadly downloaded app ranked above Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video in Apple’s charts this week at no cost leisure apps earlier than it was eliminated.

Without having to pay for something or log in to any sort of account, iPhone homeowners may beforehand use Kimi to browse a wide array of bootlegs for fashionable motion pictures and TV reveals. Many of the movies up for Best Picture at this 12 months’s Oscars have been on Kimi, at various ranges of high quality.

Poor Things was included in a grainy, pixelated state, however a high-quality model of Killers of the Flower Moon was on Kimi to stream, though an intrusive advert for on-line casinos was splashed throughout the highest. That undoubtedly isn’t the viewing expertise Martin Scorsese imagined for audiences. Not simply restricted to motion pictures, viewers have been additionally capable of entry episodes of at present airing TV reveals, like RuPaul’s Drag Race, via the Kimi app.

Who was behind this piracy app? It stays a thriller. The developer was listed as “Marcus Evans” within the app retailer earlier than Kimi was taken down, and this was the one app listed underneath that identify, seemingly a pseudonym. WIRED was unable to achieve Evans or anybody concerned with the Kimi app previous to publication.

Apple is understood for being meticulous and protecting of its “walled garden” for safe-to-download apps, so it’s shocking to see a piracy streaming choice, like Kimi, climb so excessive on the charts earlier than being axed. Kimi acquired greater than 100 person evaluations within the App Store, a lot of which blatantly talked about the free motion pictures hidden throughout the app, and it had a four-star person ranking. A consultant for Apple didn’t reply to a number of requests for remark.

This isn’t the primary a piracy app that has garnered tons of downloads within the App Store, although. In 2015, WIRED spoke with the developers behind Popcorn Time, the same app. Security reporter Andy Greenberg wrote, “With Popcorn Time, the complexity of BitTorrent search engines, trackers, clients, seeds, decompression, playback, and storage is reduced to a single click.” It’s unconfirmed how Kimi was offering the streams, however the means of watching bootlegs was undoubtedly simplified for customers—simply obtain the smartphone app and press Play.

The Kimi app’s saga is emblematic of a brand new resurgence in on-line piracy. A severe problem for rights holders and film and TV studios, piracy is as soon as once more on the rise. As streaming companies crack down on shared passwords, and budget-conscious customers seek for cheaper leisure choices, the black marketplace for bootlegs will seemingly proceed to blossom.