The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has seized seven domain names associated with torrent file-sharing website Kickass Torrents and charged the owner-operator with criminal copyright infringement and money laundering.
Fedaral officials said 30-year-old Artem Vaulin of Ukraine was arrested on Wednesday in Poland and that the U.S. government will seek to extradite him to the States.
Vaulin allegedly owns and operates Kickass Torrents, which since 2008 has provided torrent directory to let users illegally download movies, TV series, video games, audio files and other media, collectively amounting to an estimated $1 billion.
Kickass Torrents, purportedly the most-visited piracy site in the world, has consistently listed movies still in theaters that can be downloaded using file-sharing apps, according to the charges. Recent titles include "Captain America: Civil War," "Now You See Me 2," and "Finding Dory," authorities said.
“Copyright infringement exacts a large toll, a very human one, on the artists and businesses whose livelihood hinges on their creative inventions,” said Zachary T. Fardon, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago. “Vaulin allegedly used the Internet to cause enormous harm to those artists.”
According to reports, Kickass Torrents receives more than 50 million unique visitors monthly. The complaints received by the U.S. government charges Vaulin 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. Copyright-infringement charges carry a maximum sentence of five years in prison while money-laundering charges is punishable by up to 20 years.
“This criminal case is a major step to reduce illegal theft of creative content by large-scale piracy sites,” MPAA chairman and CEO Chris Dodd said. “Actions like these help protect the livelihoods of the 1.9 million hard-working Americans whose jobs are supported by the motion picture and television industry – and a legal market that generates $16.3 billion in exports for the U.S. economy.”
In addition to the charged filed against Vaulin, a Chicago federal court ordered the seizure of seven domain names linked with Kickass Torrents, which operates servers around the world: kickasstorrents.com, kat.ph, kickass.to, kastatic.com, kickass.so, thekat.tv and kat.cr.
According to the DOJ complaint, Kickass Torrents' net worth is estimated at more than $54 million, with am estimated annual advertising revenue between $12.5 million and $22.3 million. Kickass Torrents, which has moved its domain several times due to copyright lawsuits, has been ordered blocked by courts in the U.K., Ireland, Italy, Denmank, Belgium and Malaysia.
Federal agents were able to bust Vaulin after posing as a prospective advertiser on Kickass Torrents.
Law-enforment authorities across the globe have battled piracy sites for years but the task of totally shutting down such illegal websites remains a huge challenge as they routinely switch up domain names and use anonymizing services masking their identities and location.
In 2012, the FBI shut down Megaupload.com, which allegedly caused more than $500 million in damage to copyright holders. Meanwhile, Pirate Bay remains up and running today, despite several raids and arrests of its organizers over the years.
Source: Variety
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