U.S. takes control of the KickassTorrents web site – Owner arrested
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One of the biggest illegal file sharing web sites, named KickAssTorrent, has now been seized by the U.S. Government and its owner, 30 year old Artem Vaulin, has been arrested in his home country of Poland and charged with criminal copyright infringement. The U.S. Government is seeking to extradite him to the U.S. The U.S. Department of Justice also seized several domains associated with the service.
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KickassTorrents, also known as KAT, has distributed well over $1 billion in copyrighted materials, prosecutors said. Since 2008, the service has run a directory for downloading pirated movies, TV shows, music and more using the BitTorrent protocol.
Fifty million unique users visit the site every month, the department alleges.
Vaulin, who went by the screen name “tirm,” is believed to have designed KickassTorrents’ original website and overseen its operations.
“During the latter part of the conspiracy, Vaulin allegedly operated KAT under the auspices of a Ukrainian-based front company called Cryptoneat,” the DOJ added.
To evade law enforcement, Vaulin allegedly moved his domains to servers across the world, following repeated seizures and lawsuits. Courts in the U.K., Italy and Malaysia have blocked the site.
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