Kickass Torrents owner arrested, site down ☹

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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 alleged 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.

Dammit

…petition on Change.org calling for the release of KAT’s alleged owner Artem Vaulin.

“We are protesting against violent attack on our right to share information and arrest of Kat.cr founder Artem Vaulin. Our freedom to share is the human right which Artem Vaulin has been providing to millions of users from all over the world.”

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What’s more,

Database maintenance, please check back in 10 minutes.

https://thepiratebay.org/search/

…It was doing that yesterday :thinking:

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Most all the KAT proxys are still up (can’t get on to OG KAT in the UK anyways). Here’s one: https://kickass.immunicity.xyz/
ETA: maybe that means Demonoid will pick up its game again. There was nowhere better for ebooks till it had its little sabbatical. Be nice to see it get more traffic.

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As the article linked in the OP says, none of the offical proxies are up; those that are, are incomplete pretenders.

BTW, search on TPB works if you put your search term in the URL after search/

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It’s got stuff on it was uploaded as of yesterday, like, so it’s still functional at least. I’ve been using that proxy for a good while now, cos it’s pretty much always available and doesn’t seem to be particularly evil/malwarey.

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You don’t have a VPN? :scream:

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Nah, I’m too mean/poor. I gotta new job next month, for more moneys, so it’s a thing gonna happen, but not at the minute.

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Hoo boy, just read a couple of more in-depth articles. Doesn’t look good…

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While that there is horse shit, it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

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It’s horse shit in the frame of a doomed and obsolete paradigm, sure. But some of us can see what tomorrow looks like, and are running out of patience with yesterday.

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Calling it a “human right” is horse shit

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Coincidentally I started getting anti-piracy nag screens from my ISP around the same time. It was pretty confusing. I thought the site was just blocked at my house, and then there were news stories about it.

It was a helpful illustration of the utility of encrypted web browsing: Nag screen only visible with scripting enabled but no https. Nice man-in-the-middle attack, Comcast. I guess I do care about this stuff.

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One of the interesting questions that has come up in discussing this case: Since when is it in the Department of Homeland Security’s mandate to enforce copyright law?

Talk about mission creep.

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Well, now that the rule of law is completely out the window, it makes perfect sense that any and every government department would be at the beck and call of the corporatocracy, right?

The law is just another tool in service of those demonstrating might makes right.

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