Kickass Torrents domain seized - owner Arrested.

[+Anarkii Subscriber²]

The U.S. Government has arrested the alleged owner of KickassTorrents, the world's largest torrent site. The 30-year-old Ukrainian was arrested in Poland today and is charged with criminal copyright infringement and money laundering. In addition, a federal court in Chicago has ordered the seizure of several KAT domain names.
 

With millions of unique visitors per day KickassTorrents (KAT) has become the most-used torrent site on the Internet, beating even The Pirate Bay.
 

Today, however, the site has run into a significant roadblock after U.S. authorities announced the arrest of the site’s alleged owner.
 

The 30-year-old Artem Vaulin, from Ukraine, was arrested today in Poland from where the United States has requested his extradition.
 

In a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago, the owner is charged with conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and two counts of criminal copyright infringement.

The complaint further reveals that the feds posed as an advertiser, which revealed a bank account associated with the site.

It also shows that Apple handed over personal details of Vaulin after the investigator cross-referenced an IP-address used for an iTunes transaction with an IP-address that was used to login to KAT’s Facebook account.

“Records provided by Apple showed that tirm@me.com conducted an iTunes transaction using IP Address 109.86.226.203 on or about July 31, 2015. The same IP Address was used on the same day to login into the KAT Facebook,” the complaint reads.

In addition to the arrest in Poland, the court also granted the seizure of a bank account associated with KickassTorrents, as well as several of the site’s domain names.

Commenting on the announcement, Assistant Attorney General Caldwell said that KickassTorrents helped to distribute over $1 billion in pirated files.

“Vaulin is charged with running today’s most visited illegal file-sharing website, responsible for unlawfully distributing well over $1 billion of copyrighted materials.”

“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.”
 

KAT’s .com and .tv domains are expected to be seized soon by Verisign. For the main Kat.cr domain and several others, seizure warrants will be sent to the respective authorities under the MLAT treaty.

At the time of writing the main domain name Kat.cr has trouble loading, but various proxies still appear to work. KAT’s status page doesn’t list any issues, but we assume that this will be updated shortly.

TorrentFreak has reached out to the KAT team for a comment on the news and what it means for the site’s future, but we have yet to hear back.
 

Breaking story, in-depth updates will follow.

BBQ Sauce: https://torrentfreak.com/feds-seize-kickasstorrents-domains-charge-owner-160720/

[chrisj1968]

this makes Kimdotcom look like child's play

[Ph1b3r0pt1c]

Man I love the thought that we the US has our priorities straight!

[+Red King Subscriber²]

######. This was a great website.

[BinaryData]

Beat the OP to the punchline

[+Raze Subscriber²]

What??!!??   Now where will I get my information about movies and their IMDB links and the comments about the quality, etc.   

[trag3dy]

There will be another one by the end of the week.

[BinaryData]

There are plenty already. Just gotta know who to talk too. Lots of private trackers out there.

[seta-san]

dear copyright owners. 20+ for a dvd or Blu-ray is ridiculous. it costs less than a cent to press the disc.

[BinaryData]

Just now, seta-san said:

dear copyright owners. 20+ for a dvd or Blu-ray is ridiculous. it costs less than a cent to press the disc.

Actually, it costs more than that to press the disc. Costs them about $5 total for a DVD, $10-ish for a Bluray. They charge $30 - $60 for videos too. That's why I've amassed a major amount of space, so I can store whatever I want. I mean, 50GB per bluray is insane, after conversion it's ~3GB for Average quality, Best is ~8GB.

 

Anyways, private trackers are the way to go.

[T3X4S]

What is a torrent ?

 

[seta-san]

Just now, T3X4S said:

What is a torrent ?

 

for a second I couldn't tell you were serious until I noticed the ninja face.

[dragontology]

2 minutes ago, seta-san said:

dear copyright owners. 20+ for a dvd or Blu-ray is ridiculous. it costs less than a cent to press the disc.

But a whole heck of a lot more to produce a film or a TV show even of mediocre quality. Still more for great stuff. Still, cost of ownership is prohibitively high on a lot of media. But if you think film and TV are bad, look at anime. MUCH higher. Hundreds of dollars per series. It's insane. They say it's because so few people buy the physical copies, but so few people buy the physical copies because most can't afford them. And anime is a much smaller market. 

 

The problem in both cases is that there are people who are willing to pay, but they can't afford the prices asked, so they seek other means. A great compromise is streaming — Netflix for film and TV, and Crunchyroll for anime — but some distributors snub the streaming services, making sympathy for their cries of piracy a little harder to find.

[seta-san]

Just now, dragontology said:

Just now, dragontology said:

But a whole heck of a lot more to produce a film or a TV show even of mediocre quality. Still more for great stuff. Still, cost of ownership is prohibitively high on a lot of media. But if you think film and TV are bad, look at anime. MUCH higher. Hundreds of dollars per series. It's insane. They say it's because so few people buy the physical copies, but so few people buy the physical copies because most can't afford them. And anime is a much smaller market. 

 

The problem in both cases is that there are people who are willing to pay, but they can't afford the prices asked, so they seek other means. A great compromise is streaming — Netflix for film and TV, and Crunchyroll for anime — but some distributors snub the streaming services, making sympathy for their cries of piracy a little harder to find.

But a whole heck of a lot more to produce a film or a TV show even of mediocre quality. Still more for great stuff. Still, cost of ownership is prohibitively high on a lot of media. But if you think film and TV are bad, look at anime. MUCH higher. Hundreds of dollars per series. It's insane. They say it's because so few people buy the physical copies, but so few people buy the physical copies because most can't afford them. And anime is a much smaller market. 

 

The problem in both cases is that there are people who are willing to pay, but they can't afford the prices asked, so they seek other means. A great compromise is streaming — Netflix for film and TV, and Crunchyroll for anime — but some distributors snub the streaming services, making sympathy for their cries of piracy a little harder to find.

they make the money back in theater.

[BinaryData]

They've already proven that pirating doesn't have that much of an effect on sales.

[seta-san]

Just now, BinaryData said:

Just now, BinaryData said:

They've already proven that pirating doesn't have that much of an effect on sales.

They've already proven that pirating doesn't have that much of an effect on sales.

i always buy or go to the movies that i pirate and like.

[dragontology]

Just now, seta-san said:

they make the money back in theater.

So your argument is that once a film has paid for itself, or reached a certain profit level, it should go into the public domain? You can state that without beating around the bush. Some might disagree, but it's mostly an open Internet, you can just say that next time.

 

I think they should after so many years. Like busting someone for downloading a movie from 25 years ago or maybe even sooner seems stupid. Not that I've heard of anyone getting busted for it. But maybe after so long, people can just watch the movie online and it's no big deal.

[seta-san]

Just now, dragontology said:

So your argument is that once a film has paid for itself, or reached a certain profit level, it should go into the public domain? You can state that without beating around the bush. Some might disagree, but it's mostly an open Internet, you can just say that next time.

 

I think they should after so many years. Like busting someone for downloading a movie from 25 years ago or maybe even sooner seems stupid. Not that I've heard of anyone getting busted for it. But maybe after so long, people can just watch the movie online and it's no big deal.

i'm just saying that $20+ is stupid.

[BinaryData]

21 minutes ago, dragontology said:

So your argument is that once a film has paid for itself, or reached a certain profit level, it should go into the public domain? You can state that without beating around the bush. Some might disagree, but it's mostly an open Internet, you can just say that next time.

 

I think they should after so many years. Like busting someone for downloading a movie from 25 years ago or maybe even sooner seems stupid. Not that I've heard of anyone getting busted for it. But maybe after so long, people can just watch the movie online and it's no big deal.

Have you seen what some of these films make in theaters? On the first day of release for the hunger games, they made almost a billion when it only cost them 400m to make the movie. 120% profit is pretty good.

[PaulATMOS]

i see Apple assisted the Feds in this case but offered nothing in relation to the terrorist incident.  Apple must have been ###### about some free apps being distributed on Kat.

[atcapistrano]

will the u.s. government also seize this ship involved in piracy?

[DavidM]

25 minutes ago, seta-san said:

dear copyright owners. 20+ for a dvd or Blu-ray is ridiculous. it costs less than a cent to press the disc.

 

Just now, BinaryData said:

Have you seen what some of these films make in theaters? On the first day of release for the hunger games, they made almost a billion when it only cost them 400m to make the movie. 120% profit is pretty good.

Profit margins or costs are no reason to pirate anything, stop the crap, people pirate stuff because they want it for free. End of story. None of these things are necessities and can be easily skipped if you can't afford them, stop trying to justify something that is not justifiable. I will admit the reason I now have Netflix is because I pirated enough of their shows and decided they deserved my money so I could continue to enjoy their products.

 

As far as KA goes, it was bound to happen, they got too big and started attracting to much attention, and ###### the US government for wasting my tax dollars chasing torrent sites. We've MUCH MUCH bigger things that need to be looked after, for ###### sake spend that money and train some police officers about trigger discipline.

[PaulATMOS]

I'd be interested to know how much the owner of Kat has made from the site over the years.

[seta-san]

Just now, DavidM said:

 

Profit margins or costs are no reason to pirate anything, stop the crap, people pirate stuff because they want it for free. End of story. None of these things are necessities and can be easily skipped if you can't afford them, stop trying to justify something that is not justifiable. I will admit the reason I now have Netflix is because I pirated enough of their shows and decided they deserved my money so I could continue to enjoy their products.

 

As far as KA goes, it was bound to happen, they got too big and started attracting to much attention, and ###### the US government for wasting my tax dollars chasing torrent sites. We've MUCH MUCH bigger things that need to be looked after, for ###### sake spend that money and train some police officers about trigger discipline.

actually I've always used it as a "try it before you buy it". Take Warcraft. i had no idea if it would be good. i checked it out first. after i saw it and realized it was good i took my girlfriend. basically it went from me going by myself to me taking my gf..

[LaP]

16 minutes ago, DavidM said:

 

Profit margins or costs are no reason to pirate anything, stop the crap, people pirate stuff because they want it for free. End of story.

That's great if you live in the US of A. Try to watch Game of Thrones in Canada without an ultra expensive cable package just for fun.