Feds seize kickasstorrents domains, arrest owner

Maxxam

Rising Star
Platinum Member
Piracy is over :rolleyes:

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

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.

kickasstorrents_500x500-300x300.png
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 as well as several others, seziure 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.
 
AG says fuck y'all complaining about Police murders..we got bigger issues to deal with.

"Now back to the issues".

I posted about this years ago... after Chris Dodd became head of MPAA they pushed Obama hard on shutting down filesharing and piracy or Hollywood money would dry up
 
"It also shows that Apple handed over personal details of Vaulin"...do you really think feds really need to demand anything from apple, facebook or any social media outlet...?
 
wow so they set his ass up and made homie think he was getting more advertising dollars...

but there will be more ready to take the throne..


what ever happend to that mega upload dude, that muthafucka was cakin lovely... did they ever

bag him, last I heard he was in New zealand......
 
Can anybody post a better option? Rarbg.com is okay, but kickass had really good sorting


I have personally used EZTV for TV shows and YTS for movies

MOST POPULAR TORRENT SITES
1. KICKASSTORRENTS
KickassTorrents was founded in 2009 and surpassed The Pirate Bay in traffic last year. Battling various censorship efforts the site has burned through a few different domain names over the years. Most recently it switched to a Costa Rican .cr domain after it lost its Somalian .so address.

ALEXA RANK: 85 / LAST YEAR #1
2. THE PIRATE BAY
The Pirate Bay is one of the main piracy icons. The torrent site wasn’t online at the beginning of 2015 and had to deal with a staff revolt. However, it quickly regained millions of users after a successful comeback operating from a hydra of domain names until last week.

ALEXA RANK: NA / COMPETE RANK: NA / LAST YEAR #4
3. EXTRATORRENT
ExtraTorrent continues to gain more traffic and has become one of the most active torrent communities. The site is also the home of the popular ETTV and ETRG release groups.

ALEXA RANK: 342 / LAST YEAR #3
4. TORRENTZ
Torrentz has been the leading BitTorrent meta-search engine for many years. Unlike the other sites featured in the list Torrentz does not host any torrent files or magnet links, but redirects visitors to other places on the web. The site uses several domain names with .eu being the most popular.

ALEXA RANK: 351 / LAST YEAR #2
5. RARBG
RARBG, which started out as a Bulgarian tracker, was last year’s newcomer and continues to rake in more visitors. The site was blocked by UK ISPs last year, which put it on par with most other sites in the top 10.

ALEXA RANK: 1,101 / LAST YEAR #7
6. 1337X
1337x has traditionally been a community driven torrent site but several weeks ago most of the admins and moderators abandoned ship over security concerns. The coming year it will become clear whether 1337x can keep its popular status.

ALEXA RANK: 1,249 / LAST YEAR #9
7. EZTV.AG
TV-torrent distribution group EZTV shut down earlier this year after a hostile takeover. The site continued to operate under new ownership and releases its own torrents now. In solidarity with the original owners several large torrent sites have banned these ‘new’ releases from their sites.

ALEXA RANK: 1,373 / LAST YEAR #NA
8. TORRENTHOUND
TorrentHound has been around since the last decade but is a newcomer in the top 10. It has also been on the radar of copyright holders this year. The torrent site is blocked in several countries and was reported as a piracy haven to the U.S. government, alongside many other sites in this list.

ALEXA RANK: 2,239 / LAST YEAR #NA
9. YTS.AG
YTS.ag has nothing to do with the original YTS or YIFY group, but aims to take its place. As with the new EZTV, several large torrent sites are not allowing the group to use the YIFY or YTS brands on their sites.

ALEXA RANK: 740 / COMPETE RANK: 4,271 / LAST YEAR #NA
10. TORRENTDOWNLOADS
TorrentDownloads has been around for several years. The torrent site regained a spot in the top 10 this year after it was featured for the last time in 2011. It’s a no-nonsense index that provides torrents to millions of users each month.
 
Chess not checkers. :eek: Your government at work. Working for all of America. Arresting Ukrainians in Poland to bring them to court in the U.S. But those redneck cacs mad. :hmm:

Seriously, how is an owner of a torrent site a target of the U.S. government. The country has these resources to arrest Ukrainians in Poland, but can't handle pigs in the states. All the sneaky shit they been passing for the MPAA and RIAA, but no progress on police brutality(folks make money of body cams).

This is sickening. :puke:

So much wasteful spending that could be redirected to ending REAL domestic injustice. :smh:
 
Can anybody post a better option? Rarbg.com is okay, but kickass had really good sorting
piratebay is still up, but you need a strong ad blocker when going there ,lots of ads that take you to another page when u click on something
 
Chess not checkers. :eek: Your government at work. Working for all of America. Arresting Ukrainians in Poland to bring them to court in the U.S. But those redneck cacs mad. :hmm:

Seriously, how is an owner of a torrent site a target of the U.S. government. The country has these resources to arrest Ukrainians in Poland, but can't handle pigs in the states. All the sneaky shit they been passing for the MPAA and RIAA, but no progress on police brutality(folks make money of body cams).

This is sickening. :puke:

So much wasteful spending that could be redirected to ending REAL domestic injustice. :smh:

thats capitalism son,

hollywood and the recording industry have

some of the best lobbyist d.c has ever seen....


there is no right or wrong in this system, its whoever has the most capital, gets armed justice...

whoever has little to no capital, either better unite or blow with the wind...

or stay on top of your game and keep em guessing...
 
It makes sense for them to go after the site owners. When they went after the everyday person who was downloading..it was a waste of time and money.

But going after the site owners will be a failure soon as well. Mainly because a lot of those owners got the money to fight in court. They also got hundreds of millions of users/soldiers thats on their side.

The only way they will slow down piracy is if they make some agreements with the IP themselves. But good luck with that.
Take away people internet rights, youll see a major uproar.


It ain't over. This just means someone else will sit on the throne. This shell game has been going on since the days of Napster and will never quit.


Basically.

Kickass was a major site, but one dies, another is born. Youll see other big ones die, but it wont matter. Theres still millions of music/movie blogs, forums etc that are using least known storage sites and still share.
 
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Basically.
Kickass was a major site, but one dies, another is born.
Youll see other big ones die, but it wont matter.
Got millions of music/movie blogs, forums etc that are using least known storage sites and still sharing.
The major thing I loved about KAT then the others is when they find fake torrents, it gets pulled pretty quick. Many other sites aren't so quick to do the same. Along with the ratings, you can see what others state about the quality of the vid and audio.

But it is what it is... Sad day
 
thats capitalism son,

hollywood and the recording industry have

some of the best lobbyist d.c has ever seen....


there is no right or wrong in this system, its whoever has the most capital, gets armed justice...

whoever has little to no capital, either better unite or blow with the wind...

or stay on top of your game and keep em guessing...


But Obama killing it...those cacs mad!! :eek: Folks marching for years to get pigs arrested here, but the US got time for all this fuckery. Government sure does have people trained right. :smh:

People will still protest today. No convictions will result. But damn if the government can't reach across borders to put in work.
 
The major thing I loved about KAT then the others is when they find fake torrents, it gets pulled pretty quick. Many other sites aren't so quick to do the same. Along with the ratings, you can see what others state about the quality of the vid and audio.

But it is what it is... Sad day

EZTV and YTS are reliable in that respect...I did like KAT's system of trust tho w/ the gold/purple crown members representing reliable posters
 
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