How Apple and Facebook Helped To Take Down KickassTorrents (pcworld.com)

Reader itwbennett writes (edited): Artem Vaulin, the alleged owner of the torrent directory service KickassTorrents, was arrested in Poland earlier this week, charged with copyright infringement and money laundering. As we dig deeper as to what exactly happened, it turns out Apple and Facebook were among the companies that handed over data to the U.S. in its investigation. Department of Homeland Security investigators traced IP addresses associated with KickassTorrents domains to a Canadian ISP, which turned over server data, including emails. At some point, investigators noticed that Vaulin had an Apple email account that was used to make iTunes purchases from two IP addresses -- both of which also accessed a Facebook account promoting KickassTorrents.if you're wondering where exactly iTunes came into play, here's a further explanation. It all started in November 2015, when an undercover IRS Special Agent reached out to a KickassTorrents representative about hosting an advertisement on the site. An agreement was made and the ad, which purportedly advertised a program to study in the United States, was to be placed on individual torrent listings for $300 per day. When it finally went live on March 14th 2016, a link appeared underneath the torrent download buttons for five days. Sure it was a short campaign, but it was enough to link KAT to a Latvian bank account, one that received $31 million in deposits -- mainly from advertising payments -- between August 2015 and March 2016. Upon further investigation of the email accounts, and corresponding reverse lookups, it was found that the account holder had made a purchase on iTunes.

Comments

Jurisdiction

[Luthair]

If the servers operated outside the US, and the owner lived outside the US, how does the USA think they have jurisdiction to charge him? Are all American companies subject to laws in every other country as their websites are accessible to users in those countries?

iTunes purchase?

[andy1307]

The guy running the torrent site is buying stuff on iTunes?

Re:iTunes purchase?

[jandrese]

There have been studies that show that people who pirate also happen to buy the most music. It seems crazy, but really they are the people most interested in music so it's maybe not so surprising.

Re:Happens All The Time

[swb]

But presumably the Brazilian Google exec was just that -- a Brazilian living and working in Brazil, and presumably under the jurisdiction of their justice system (no matter how non-local the video hosting was).

What I as an American find kind of unappealing is the jurisdictional claims that US law enforcement makes against a foreign national living in a foreign country whose actions took place in a foreign country and only tangentially involved the US, like the guy happened to have a dollar bill in his pocket at the time, so therefore all US laws apply.

I think it's serious overreach and it makes me wonder how safe I am from the reverse situation, some foreign prosecutor who decides that because I said "boo" on the Internet and it breaks some law in Fuckedupistan that they should get to prosecute me.

KickAss used to follow the DMCA

[zedaroca]

They used to remove content when receiving DMCA letters from supposed copyright holders, just like google.
It seems (to me) that the reason why he was not hiding much is that he was complying with DMCA.
This means that:
1. the Department of Homeland Security is part of the copyright police, as is the IRS (these are new for me - used to think it was just the FBI);
2. complying with the DMCA won't save you from trouble;
3. they will make up charges to get you extradited and harsher punishment (money laundering???)