Les autorités fédérales ont finalement arrêté le cerveau présumé derrière les plus grands et les plus notoires BitTorrent KickassTorrents site de distribution du monde (KAT), le ministère américain de la Justice a annoncé mercredi.
Après The Pirate Bay a subi une violation du droit d'auteur difficultés, KickassTorrents (KAT) est devenu le plus grand et le plus utilisé site pirate sur Internet, attirant des millions de visiteurs uniques par jour.
Cependant, le site semble être déconnecté après son propriétaire présumé Artem Vaulin, 30 ans, ressortissant ukrainien a été appréhendé aujourd'hui en Pologne, et le gouvernement des États-Unis a demandé son extradition.
Bien que certains sites proxy semblent être actuellement mis en place, son site principal, https://kat.cr, semble être en baisse dans le monde entier et la plupart des autres domaines, y compris KAT kickasstorrents.com, kastatic.com, thekat.tv, kat.cr, kickass.cr, kickass.to, kat.ph, ont été saisis par les autorités.
Accusations portées contre KickassTorrents Propriétaire
Selon plainte pénale [pdf] déposé en Cour de district des États-Unis à Chicago, Vaulin fait face:
Deux chefs d'accusation de violation de copyright pénale.
Un chef d'accusation de complot en vue de commettre une violation du droit d'auteur criminel.
Un chef d'accusation de complot en vue de commettre le blanchiment d'argent.
Les autorités fédérales des États-Unis disent que KickassTorrent a causé des dommages de plus de 1 milliard $ aux détenteurs de droits d’auteur.
Here’s what Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell stated in a press release issued by the Department of Justice:
"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."
In addition to the KAT’s domain names seizure, the Chicago court has also ordered the seizure of bank accounts related to the notorious pirate website, as well as servers located in Chicago, USA, and Canada.
KickassTorrents has been blocked in many countries in the past including the UK, Ireland, Italy, Denmark, Belgium, and Malaysia.
How KickassTorrents Team Responds to Copyright Infringement Complaints:
According to the court affidavit, Vaulin claimed that his BitTorrent site KAT did not violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), but they did.
When any film studio filed a notice-and-takedown for a potential DMCA violation, KAT responds like this:
Here’s How Authorities get their hands on the KAT Owner:
An IRS agent went undercover to buy and advertise on the notorious site for five days, at the price of $300 per day.
This revealed Vaulin's e-mail account, trim@me.com, hosted by Apple, who provided a copy of his email inbox to authorities after being requested for help.
With the help of the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT), US officials were easily able to obtain information about the KAT's operations from the bank accounts used to collect payments for advertisement slots.
"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," reads the complaint. "The same IP Address was used on the same day to login into the KAT Facebook."
An analysis of this account later disclosed the presence of KAT's servers in Chicago.
