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Feds Seize KickassTorrents Domains and Arrest Owner In Poland (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Federal authorities announced on Wednesday the arrest of the alleged mastermind of KickassTorrents (KAT), the world's largest BitTorrent distribution site. As of this writing, the site is still up. Prosecutors have formally charged Artem Vaulin, 30, of Ukraine, with one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement, one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, and two counts of criminal copyright infringement. Like The Pirate Bay, KAT does not host individual infringing files but rather provides links to .torrent and .magnet files so that users can download unauthorized copies of TV shows, movies, and more from various BitTorrent users. According to a Department of Justice press release sent to Ars Technica, Vaulin was arrested on Wednesday in Poland. The DOJ will shortly seek his extradition to the United States. "Vaulin is charged with running today's most visited illegal file-sharing website, responsible for unlawfully distributing well over $1 billion of copyrighted materials," Assistant Attorney General Caldwell said in the statement. "In an effort to evade law enforcement, Vaulin allegedly relied on servers located in countries around the world and moved his domains due to repeated seizures and civil lawsuits. His arrest in Poland, however, demonstrates again that cybercriminals can run, but they cannot hide from justice." KickassTorrents added a dark web address last month to make it easier for users to bypass blockades installed by ISPs.
So if I Google kickass torrents and Google returns a link to their site, shouldn't Google be prosecuted as an accessory?
See how fucking stupid these charges are?
I guess the DOJ needs something to distract everyone from the whole letting Clinton commit treason thing.
We just saw an article explaining how China had just outlawed ad-blockers.
Does this mean China can accuse the maker of ad-blocking software with a major crime, and require that person to be extradited to China for trial?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Warning. Last time the Feds seized a site (some child porn site on TOR) they kept hosting it themselves for a month with malware on it. Accessing KAT right now would be foolish.
"Vaulin is charged with running today's most visited illegal file-sharing website, responsible for unlawfully distributing well over $1 billion of copyrighted materials," Assistant Attorney General Caldwell said in the statement. "In an effort to evade law enforcement, Vaulin allegedly relied on servers located in countries around the world and moved his domains due to repeated seizures and civil lawsuits. His arrest in Poland, however, demonstrates again that cybercriminals can run, but they cannot hide from justice."
- is this what passes for 'justice' today?
I guess he, who has the most guns defines what justice is. Justice is the opposite of what this Orwellian prick says. Justice is in non initiation of violence by any government. Justice is in equal treatment of individuals by law regardless of their circumstances. Using government oppression to enforce copyright has nothing to do with justice.
Government may have a function, that function being enforcing contract law and dealing with fraud. That is all that any government should ever have any power to do. Everything else is oppression, not justice.
You can't handle the truth.
Did he really think responding to DMCA takedown notices and removing the content was going to keep this from happening?
Moral of the story: don't hang out in Poland. -PCP
the world is fucked
I still use TPB. I don't go anywhere else.
We need to create a new system so that the Feds can't take down our websites.
As of this writing, KAT is down, both through conventional DNS and through their onion address.
So if I Google kickass torrents and Google returns a link to their site, shouldn't Google be prosecuted as an accessory?
If you post to /. about the idea of using Google to search for Kickass Torrents, shouldn't you and /. both be prosecuted as accessories?
If you post to /. about the idea of using Google to search for Kickass Torrents, shouldn't you and /. both be prosecuted as accessories?
If you quote a post about the idea of using Google search for Kickass Torrents shouldn't you be prosecuted?
just reading this makes us all guilty
People still use those? Google is still the fastest and best:
filetype:torrent [your query]
+1
Links are free speech.
Oh man, nice troll, you present us with a classic slippery slope fallacy, how creative, definitely the way to win an argument without supplying any actual facts.
Thanks for making it clear that your ability to make a point is "naive and simplistic".
to make me use any one of a hundred other bookmarks?
Tell us, have you managed to get Kim Dotcom to the US yet ?
Also, better head over to US Navy HQ, seems like they pirated software too worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Do as we say, not as we do.
They did it because it hosted the only version of uncompromised Tails.
There are many other torrent sites. Stupid fuckers. As you take away, your shit is taken away harder.
"...His arrest in Poland, however, demonstrates again that cybercriminals can run, but they cannot hide from tyranny."
ftfy
That does it, I'm not buying anything more from Poland!
It's convenience, not justice, to go after the message board, instead of the people who actually infringed these copyrights.
>"Vaulin is charged with running today's most visited illegal file-sharing website, responsible for unlawfully distributing well over $1 billion of copyrighted materials,"
The government who ripped the public off TRILLIONS and TRILLIONS of dollars.. are going after a billion for the music and record industry. Paying these heroes salaries' are the same taxpayers they ripped off. This is a mother fucking racket.
How about the guy who only ripped off $1 billion (even though he did not really) .. goes after the government that ripped off 20 + TRILLION chasing terror and other homosexual racism shit (they really did and do). How about smash your government in the fucking face?
Assholes.
"His arrest in Poland, however, demonstrates again that cybercriminals can run, but they cannot hide from justice."
What does justice have to do with it?
The world we live in is seriously screwed up.
And I blame the capitalism and corporations for most of it. Greed is the root of all evil.
The fact that you are ill makes me nauseous.
“Artem Vaulin was allegedly running a worldwide digital piracy website that stole more than $1 billion in profits from the U.S. entertainment industry,” said Executive Associate Director Edge. Stole? Okay.
apparently, you have no idea what how treason is defined by the US Constitution. let me help...
US Constitution, Article 3, Section 3
"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court."
hope he escapes
The USoA DoJ, if it hasn't always defined that way, certainly now defines "justice" as "whatever we do", and since they're Americans they don't have to wait for other countries' legal niceties, borders, or anything. In a sense this is an outgrowth of the Barbary pirates thing, and the USoA has never stepped back with a "problem solved". No, it liked the fight and went looking for more. The USoA has a culture of fighting, down to fighting abstract concepts if there's nothing else available, and its DoJ does it just as much as the rest of the USoA government, or most any other part of the USoA. In fact, even the government will let itself be called in for a good fight on iffy odds by its friends, like the racketeering copyright bunch. We've seen that with their destroying of mr. Dotcom's business that like this, was only very tenuously connected to the USoA.
So yes, this, and other things like this, do pass for "justice" in the Empire of the USoA these days.
Want to change this? Well, mr. "Yes We Can" is still in office for a few months. In fact, he should call me, he has my number, and talk "internet" with me. There is an easy solution to this sort of bullshit and he can play the big enabler in it, yet.
"His arrest in Poland, however, demonstrates again that cybercriminals can run, but they cannot hide from justice."
No, what his arrest demonstrates is how low we have become allowing Hollywood to buy laws, how little understanding judges and juries have of technology, and how weak Poland is permitting us to fuck with a sovereign citizen.
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So glad they captured this foreign copyright infringer -- making the World a *much* safer place for everyone. Now maybe the Feds can finally spend some time on this "people keep killing other people" thing that seems to be going on here in the US and, I hear, other countries.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
There are more people accessing content on P2P platforms. This does mean that masses are interested in sharing.
The only people against this are the rich few, who haven't been able to adapt to the changing times, and have seen their cashflows decline. I would rather put it this way, they are so greedy that they want to increase their customer base and ring in a lot more profit.
It is disheartening to see that the democratically elected Government acting in favour of he influential few.
Well, considering the democratic process, the governments should do away with the copyrighting laws.
Guilty of living in a cross'border police state which operates a system where only the powerless are punished.
Requiem for the American Dream
According to the ars article, it looks like the arrested man made millions of dollars in advertising revenue from his site. It is one thing to engage in filesharing - copyright infringing and all, but in addition he was profiteering big time from his activity. That makes it to me quite different from a legal point of view - he obviously made money from an illegal activity, and I expect that the punishment will be harsher because of it.
So if I Google kickass torrents and Google returns a link to their site, shouldn't Google be prosecuted as an accessory?
No.
That mostly should not have existed in the first place.
https://kickasstorrentsan.com/
COME GET ME MOTHERFUCKERS!!!
But it sure would be patentable! Run to the USPTO!!!
Not being a banker or broker; that would have rendered him impervious to the rule of law.
I would like to believe that this guy has money stashed all over the place & should be able to fund his own defense. Even so, no matter how much money is spent, no matter what the source, he is likely to be found guilty of something. Something serious enough to give him a few years in prison.
SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT
The irony here is they can extradite someone who links to things but not an actual child rapist such as Roman Polanski who is evading US justice in Poland. That's a pretty huge double standard considering the "think of the children" excuse used for internet crackdowns.
You obviously don't understand in reality how the US government works in some cases, so I'm gong to explain it to you. First of all, the US actually did submit papers to Poland requesting that Polanski be extradited. The Polish government rejected them. However, I'm pretty sure that Polanski feared that the Polish government might not always reject such requests, so apparently he's now back in France. French law prevents his extradition.
What you also need to know is that US government will never, ever, admit this but in some cases they don't really and truly care all that much about getting the person extradited. It's more about political grandstanding than anything else. Polanski's victim has long asked for the case to be dropped because she says that she long ago forgave him and she can't get past it because the US government won't stop making an issue of it and the press won't leave her alone about it. Are her wishes being listened to? No they are not. The reason is that because she was so underage at the time (What was it? 13 years old maybe...) that the US government doesn't want to seem to be soft on abusing minors and giving preferential treatment to Polanski when they go after child porn people all the time. The government won't admit it, but I think they were pretty satisfied with Switzerland confining him to his home for 2 months and the ongoing attempts to extradite him do prevent him from ever returning to the USA, which I believe is the true but unstated goal of the US government. His punishment in reality is that he can't come back to the USA again. Bobby Fischer, the former world chess champion, was locked up in Japan for about half a year while they "investigated" his situation. Fischer violated US law with his rematch against Spassky because it was held in Yugoslavia which was under embargo at the time. Fischer was a very mentally disturbed person and his constant complaints against the USA and flaunting the fact that he broke US law with the rematch eventually got the US government interested in proving a point to him, so they got the Japanese to lock him up on nebulous charges. Fischer was eventually released and given Icelandic citizenship, which pretty much assured both that he was punished for his crime with the Japanese lockup and that he wouldn't return to the USA, which I think were the real goals of the US government. Similarly the US government doesn't really want Polanski to come back to the US nor are that really all that keen to lock him up any more than they've already done, but they can't admit that.
I wasn't aware the DOJ had jurisdiction in Poland.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
This link seems to be working for now :]
https://kattorrentes.com/
Read the analysis of the complain by torrentfreak to learn how the feds tracked him down and what led to his undoing:
https://torrentfreak.com/can-kickasstorrents-make-a-comeback-160721/
main thing: not using TOR, using a static IP address from home to do everything from manage KAT to buying songs on iTunes.
I am certain that many businesses listed in the yellow pages break various laws on a regular basis, knowingly or not.
So, by this logic, we should arrest the publisher of the Yellow Pages for providing referrals to those businesses that commit crimes.
I look forward to the US Government vigorously prosecuting these criminals who print the Yellow Pages.
And that's what they want. Now they can do what ever they want without a warrant, because we're all criminals....
Whenever I hear of the US expending time, effort, and money to shut down something that no one really cares about, I wonder how much the people in power were paid to perform these exercises. Probably several million to the Clinton Foundation I would guess....
Can you please stop letting America police your sovereign state?
Thanks,
American that would prefer the entire world not be like the US.
KAT was never about finding torrents, as you say, it isn't hard by various methods. The real value of KAT was the community. The KAT community would comment and rate torrents. As you're probably aware, there are a lot of bad torrents, and simply fake ones generated by the various copyright associations. The only thing KAT really did was enable a large group of people to crowd source the verification of torrents enabling people to find good ones. Otherwise yes you can most easily find a "torrent" you are looking for, but is it any good, or is it a fake.
However, none of this has anything to do with technology, so any site can do it, it just helps to be a popular one (i.e. a larger community to manually verify torrents). Should KAT go away, people will just move to a different one, and things continue as before. There will likely be some disruption, but it will only really be a temporary win for the copyright associations. They of course will simply use this is justification of their existence to continue to leech money from the various media industries (hence the "BILLION" dollar figure which is complete BS, as the simplistic example goes the car thief wasn't going to buy the car if he hadn't stolen it)... Rinse, repeat, etc...
Criminalizing civil matters at the behest of profit motives since forever.
The fact that you are nauseous makes me throw up in torrents.
How in the world can a foreigner be tried for breaking US law? It is quite sickening.
I'll send him a link to a copy of a $100 bill
don't worry, trump will take care of that with his view an illegal website go to jail policy.
"cybercriminals can run, but they cannot hide from justice." ....But apparently Hillary doesn't even have to run from Justice. Justice runs from her.
the truth us has far as the site is running no cause for alarm then.
Serena Williams Stuns in Racy Revealing Selfie|CREEBHILLS
Well, just how much is Hollywood/media paying in taxes to the IRS each year?
Or is it like Apple and others that just can't seem to run up a domestic profit?
A lot of SONY emails were leaked. Did the IRS or DOJ actually follow up on these?
If one calls it money laundering then the DOJ should be going after bigger fish, which would be much of corporate America, and quite a few political donations.