The United States Justice Department has successfully apprehended the mastermind behind the well known piracy torrent website, KickAss. KickAss can be stated as one of the largest and the most notorious BitTorent websites that was operating till date. According to the report, Artem Vaulin, a 30 year old individual, the owner and the operator of KickAss was arrested in Poland on behalf of the United States Department of Justice. All of the sites that can be linked to KickAss has already been seized.
Artem Vaulin, is a Ukrainian individuals and the United States Justice Department is requesting extradition with regards to the crimes that he has committed. The reports suggest that the man will be charged on two accounts. On one hand he will face charges on the count of copyright infringement along with conspiracy to commit copyright infringement. On the other hand, he will also face charges related to money laundering. An astonishing statistic is that KickAss was earning a revenue of $16 million with the advertisements that it shows.
According to the statement by Leslie R. Caldwell, the asst. Attorney general of the United States Justice Department’s Criminal Division, “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.”
KickAss torrent are not the only BitTorrent website involved in Piracy. There are any other websites like ThePirateBay, Torrentz, TorrentHound, etc. Every year millions of users search online for movietorrents, music torrents, etc. and these piracy websites thrive on it. Many people are of the idea that unless individuals stop downloading and looking for pirated contents, taking down piracy sites is a farfetched dream.
Many well known TV Series like HBO’s Game of Thrones, AMC’s The Walking Dead, etc. have suffered losses in millions due to the piracy sites like KickAss.
