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.

Comments

prosecuted for HTML

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Some thoughts

[Okian Warrior]

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?

Re: Some thoughts

[Anonymous Coward]

For trial? Hahahahaha

Re:Some thoughts

[BitterOak]

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?

Only if he's arrested in another country where ad blockers are illegal. Presumably aiding and abetting copyright infringement is illegal in Poland as well as in the United States.

Re:Some thoughts

[viperidaenz]

It's hard to extradite someone from somewhere what they have done it not a crime

That's probably why the DOJ is slapping on "conspiracy to commit money laundering" because a lot of countries have treaties to combat money laundering.
They won't have to argue Artem has committed a crime that Poland recognises in relation to copyright infringement.

Warning

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Justice?

[roman_mir]

"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.

Re:Justice?

[Applehu Akbar]

"...His arrest in Poland, however, demonstrates again that cybercriminals can run, but they cannot hide from justice."

While ransomware distributors prey on us at will, because the priority is on protecting Hollywood from copyright violators.

Re: Justice?

[jonwil]

The problem is that most of the malware out there comes from countries like Russia that dont have an extradition treaty with the US, that have one but where the treaty doesn't allow extradition of malware authors or that are powerful enough that the US cant make them bend over in the way they can for smaller countries like Poland.

Prosecuted for posting about searching for torrent

[ZipK]

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?

Torrent Sites?

[0100010001010011]

People still use those? Google is still the fastest and best:

filetype:torrent [your query]

Re:Torrent Sites?

[AmiMoJo]

filetype:magnet is even better, as Google usually supplies an actual working magnet URL that you can use to directly start your download. Exactly the same as Kickass Torrents.

Re:Update

[evilviper]

As of this writing, KAT is down, both through conventional DNS and through their onion address.

The main sites are down, but that doesn't surprise me, as they often have capacity problems and can be hard to reach for several hours, nearly every day.

Still reachable domains are;

- http://kickasstorrents.ee/
- http://kickasstorrentsan.com/
- http://kickasstorrents.cr/
- http://kickass-torrents.to/

And since I'm here, a few alternatives:

- https://eztv.ag/showlist/name/
- https://thepiratebay.org/
- https://isohunt.to/torrents/

ROFL

[shaitand]

"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?

Treason?

[Anonymous Coward]

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."

We are shameful

[fred911]

"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.

Crowd sourced verification

[DarthVain]

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...