Busted! Police have finally arrested the alleged owner of the Kickass Torrents ‘Artem Vaulin’ in Poland on Wednesday. As per The US Department of Justice, Artem was charged with two counts of criminal copyright infringement, conspiracy to commit copyright infringement and money laundering. Kickass Torrents has also been shut down by the police.
The website was notorious for giving out newly released movies, songs and video games. Recently released Captain America : Civil War, Finding Dory and many other pirated media were available on the website. Even many Bollywood movies were also available, including Great Grand Masti which got leaked online.
Social media went berserk after the news got published, the visitors of the website have sh
own their support for Artem, and asked for his release. Artem Vaulin was known to the internet community as ’tirm’. As per report by Torrent Freaks, Apple also assisted police in catching Vaulin.
Kickass torrent generated a lot of popularity for all the wrong reason and had about half a billion users. As per Alexa Internet Inc, that provides web traffic data, Kickass torrents became most visited BitTorrent directory even surpassing Piratebay.
Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell commented, “Vaulin is charged with running today’s most visited illegal file-sharing website, responsible for unlawfully distributing well over $1 billion of copyrighted materials.”
Caldwell also added, “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 cyber criminals can run, but they cannot hide from justice.”
Artem Vaulin, 30, started the site back in 2008 and from then on the website has been suspended numerous times across the world. Kickass Torrents was also blocked in October 2015 by Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox for malware ads and phishing concerns.
In addition to the lawsuit many other legal actions have been taken against Vaulin, as Chicago’s federal court ordered to cease websites bank account. What other twist and turns this story takes, and how will it affect the longstanding battle with online piracy only weeks to come will tell.
