
Alleged founder of world’s largest BitTorrent distribution site arrested - fcambus
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/07/kickasstorrents-alleged-founder-artem-vaulin-arrested-in-poland/
======
akavel
ArsTechnica seems to have the most detailed and best linked (PDF + DoJ press
release) article as of now:

[http://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/2016/07/kickasstorrents-a...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/2016/07/kickasstorrents-alleged-founder-artem-vaulin-arrested-in-
poland/)

Somewhat more/complementary details seem to be available on:
[https://torrentfreak.com/feds-seize-kickasstorrents-
domains-...](https://torrentfreak.com/feds-seize-kickasstorrents-domains-
charge-owner-160720/) — e.g. regarding methods:

 _[...] 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. [...]_

Some aspects which seem interesting to me, from what is reported:

• that apparently KAT owner tried to shield off DMCA takedown requests (which
I'd see as trying to affirm being legal);

• that according to the articles he seems to not have used Tor (or fumbled in
it).

(Assuming no parallel construction and that he's actually the guy, etc. etc.)

EDIT: I couldn't really find any Polish sources — suppose because it's middle
of the night here... (the single article —
[http://www.dobreprogramy.pl/Zalozyciel-Kickass-Torrents-
zatr...](http://www.dobreprogramy.pl/Zalozyciel-Kickass-Torrents-zatrzymany-
przez-polska-policje-chce-go-amerykanska-prokuratura,News,74921.html) — seems
to be written based on the above English-language ones)

~~~
robotkilla
> 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

The article implies that the investigator had a FB and iTunes IP address and
THEN Apple gave the rest of the user's details but that doesn't really make
sense.

I'm guessing that they gag-ordered and subpoenaed FB for account info, but how
did the investigator get the iTunes transaction IP address prior to getting
user details from Apple?

Edit:

I think the more likely scenario is that FB was forced to give up user details
and the only valid info was the IP Address, and then Apple (and probably
google etc.) was forced to search through their databases and produce any
records related to the IP address in question.

Or maybe the USG has a database filled with iTunes transaction information --
I really wouldn't doubt this at all. I'm sure music is a partial indicator of
"dissident" level in whatever algorithm is used to assist investigators.

~~~
dmix
The FBI found out his bank account information from buying ads. He probably
bought something on iTunes and that would be sufficient for Apple to be given
a search warrant for any data related to x IP address, billing info, email
address, or name. Any identifying details they collected at that point.

Not hard to connect the pieces once you have a money trail. That's an
investigative gold mine.

~~~
robotkilla
> The FBI found out his bank account information from buying ads. He probably
> bought something on iTunes

This actually sounds the most believable to me, excellent point.

------
CaptSpify
As an American, I wish we would stop doing this. It isn't effective, and it's
a waste of time/resources that could be better spent elsewhere.

I'd even argue that its counter-effective to progress. Instead of punishing
people for making more efficient systems, we should reward them, and try to
integrate.

~~~
biot
A person in the US who, for example, wants to watch all but the latest season
of Game of Thrones can go to iTunes and, within seconds, purchase and start
watching. And it will be in better quality than the torrent which was ripped
off some TV broadcast and re-compressed. iTunes is available for both Windows
and Mac (plus various iOS) and is super simple to use. And the one purchase
lets you either stream or download to any of your devices and watch whenever
you want.

The very latest content does get artificially restricted due to various
business reasons (licensing deals, etc.) and I suspect that will change over
time to go to an instant-release model. Ditto for fewer geo restrictions.
We're starting to see these changes more and more. For music, there are far
more options available: Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play Music, etc. where
one low monthly fee lets you play almost anything you want.

However, despite all this incredible ease for lots of different media, people
still want content for free. Maybe the solution is to combine enforcement with
an educational campaign so that people are aware of the myriad legal options
available to them.

~~~
nikdaheratik
As an American living in Australia, I'd say your perspective is kind of skewed
by the American market. A large number of torrenters aren't cheapskates or
thieves but are from outside the U.S. and unable to even get ahold of this
stuff due to the way licensing overseas works. Or if they do, it's at
1.5x-2.5x the price.

We have a 21st century distribution model tied to a mid-20th century legal
framework and business model. It's hard to say what is fair in every case.
What I feel is not fair is throwing the book at all of these site owners,
especially when the laws are written in the U.S. but are somehow stretched to
where they apply to people who never set foot there.

In 5-10 years, they could still be in jail while technology remakes itself to
the point where either distribution and payment has finally started working
gain, or torrenting has gotten to the point where it's nearly impossible to
trace the activity to any one person. Neither option seems unlikely, and
punishing people now for something that doesn't hurt anyone too much does not
seem like it's worth it.

~~~
blowski
I'll give some more examples of use cases where the torrent system serves
users better than the legal distribution, but has nothing to do with money.

My wife is Brazilian and I'm British, so we're trying to bring our son up as
bilingual. Trying to find legally distributed mainstream kids films dubbed in
Portuguese is incredibly hard. Sure, you can buy them in Brazil... and then
they don't play on hardware in the UK. Neither Netflix nor Amazon Prime have
them. Meanwhile, a quick search on a torrent download site gives me access to
hundreds of mainstream films dubbed in Portuguese.

Torrents allow me to watch anything, anywhere, with minimal hardware. I don't
need to buy DVDs or DVD players. I don't have to work out which subscription I
need to use to watch the latest episode of a program. I have downloaded
torrents for which I already own the Blu-ray DVD, but it's in a box somewhere
and I can't be bothered to find it.

So yeah, there are lots more use cases for torrents than just wanting to be a
cheapskate.

~~~
c4n4rd
Note: You can find some shows on youtube.

Cheers and abraços

~~~
blacksmith_tb
My son liked Fishtronaut / Peixonauta [1] which was made in Brazil and
released in Portuguese, Spanish, and English simultaneously, I think (it's on
Netflix in the US).

1: [http://tvpinguim.com/peixonauta/](http://tvpinguim.com/peixonauta/)

------
derefr
It seems like a lot of the most well-known pseudo-legal BitTorrent "groups"
(PopcornTime, YIFY, ISOHunt, now Kat) turn out to be one-man shops, and as
such, just completely dissolve as soon as their owner crosses paths with law
enforcement. In some cases, these services are integral enough to the "scene"
to be brought back by others. But other times, everything just stops for a
while.

This seems like a bus-factor problem. Why does it keep happening? Why aren't
these sites being run by multi-national teams that can survive a loss like
this?

Even The Pirate Bay is "just" Swedish, so a sufficiently-motivated Swedish
Government _could_ shut TPB down. Meanwhile, there's no single country that
could shut down e.g. Wikipedia.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> This seems like a bus-factor problem. Why does it keep happening? Why aren't
> these sites being run by multi-national teams that can survive a loss like
> this?

Trust. You have to be sure the people you're working with are diligent,
careful, and won't turn you in (and likewise for them).

~~~
derefr
It feels like you could factor off the trust requirements into a much smaller
kernel, though.

For example, you could operate (your instance of) your pseudo-legal service
yourself, but open-source the codebase (sticking it on GitHub even) and accept
patches from anyone.

You could also implement a simple replication architecture for your service,
where at any time one node (yours) is considered to be the 'canonical master',
and then other nodes can join the network as slaves, receive replicated state,
and run as mirrors. Sort of like Linux package repository mirrors.

With such a setup, arresting the original maintainer just means 1. a codebase
fork by a new maintainer, and 2. a (probably manual) network master-node
election.

And that's just a setup that lets you stay in complete control without having
to trust anybody (since you still "own" the codebase, and the master node,
until you disappear.) If you are willing to relinquish control to the system
itself, you could just build your service on a DHT or a signed store-and-
forward hierarchy or a blockchain or whatever. There's no reason that things
that are essentially "a BitTorrent tracker exposed through a website" need to
have their canonical state anywhere at all.

~~~
eevilspock
A distributed blockchain sounds right. Now imagine that "mining" for this
blockhchain is serving torrents, and you have to spend currency to download.
The currency can be sold for monetary currency (e.g. dollars or bitcoin), so
leechers could pay seeders.

~~~
Dylan16807
What problem are you trying to solve? Downloading torrents works fine. The
weak link is the search engine and description-host.

------
eggy
Aside from the legal technicalities here, I mostly ponder the future of IP. I
think Napster positively affected the music distribution world in the long
run. I am not very black-and-white on this issue, however, since there are
many contradictions by both sides.

I read the majority of comments here on HN about dated business models, big
corporation dislike, the old executives don't understand the new market,
etc..., but then a young indie artist in LA finds out Zara the clothing
retailer has obviously copied her designs, and the lynch mobs are out to
boycott Zara, send letters and other things to Zara and their attorneys. [1]

I have not inquired directly, but I am guessing a number of the indie artist's
supporters have downloaded a torrent or two. How do they morally distinguish
the two, or how does anybody who is against copyright or property rights of
IP?

[1] [https://www.buzzfeed.com/victoriasanusi/an-independent-
artis...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/victoriasanusi/an-independent-artist-has-
accused-zara-of-stealing-her-desig?utm_term=.duwxvQBeek#.hr3OM54qqg)

~~~
olalonde
Lots of cognitive dissonance on HN regarding IP rights. Also, see any previous
post where a Chinese company is accused of stealing IP or cloning apps.

~~~
Sacho
Is it cognitive dissonance, or simply different people commenting? HN is not a
hive mind.

~~~
olalonde
Can't say for sure, just the feeling I get. HN comments usually seem pre-
dominantly pro or anti copyright depending on context (e.g. "big company fails
to comply with GPL" would result in mainly pro copyright comments while
"bittorrent site gets shut down" would mainly result in anti copyright ones).

~~~
sangnoir
> HN comments usually seem pre-dominantly pro or anti copyright depending on
> context (e.g. "big company fails to comply with GPL" would result in mainly
> pro copyright comments while "bittorrent site gets shut down" would mainly
> result in anti copyright ones).

I wouldn't use the GPL as a copyrights poster-boy since it subverts the
'normal' use of copyrights (restriction of distribution by 3rd parties) - the
FSF calls it 'copyleft' for that very reason. My feeling is that being pro-GPL
and being pro-bittorrent is consistent with the "information wants to be free"
mindset - no cognitive dissonance necessary. The day HN becomes pro-Mickey-
Mouse laws then you would have an argument.

~~~
olalonde
I disagree that the GPL subverts the 'normal' use of copyright (though I'm
aware it is presented as such by the FSF). Tons of copyrighted works are
licensed for distribution by 3rd parties. Software licenses which allowed
unrestricted distribution existed before the GPL. What the GPL innovated on
was to put light restrictions on distribution to ensure modified source code
would be made available along with binary distributions. In a world without
copyright, there would still be tons of software without publicly available
source code (perhaps more than now, due to the inability to enforce GPL
violations).

Also, "information wants to be free" is more of a vague idea than anything
else. I want information to be free. I'm a big user and proponent of open
source software (heck, I wrote a non-trivial feature of Webtorrent). That
doesn't necessarily mean I'm against copyright.

~~~
sangnoir
> Software licenses which allowed unrestricted distribution existed before the
> GPL

There is a world of a difference between 'allowing' distribution of source
code and _mandating_ it (like the GPL does).

~~~
Houshalter
Isn't that exactly his point though? That the main innovation with GPL would
be unenforceable without copyright.

------
kayman
The cat and mouse game continues.

Remember The Pirate Bay?

Why don't studios have their own similar sites where they allow free torrents
of some shows and offer paid torrents.

As a busy person, I'd much rather pay for something which guarantees:

\- high quality \- no subtitles \- no buffering issues \- no viruses \- click
and play

~~~
mason55
You can do all of those things on iTunes or Amazon Video. Why would the movie
studios run their own content distribution when it gives them little
competitive advantage.

~~~
ekianjo
No you can't, all the content there is DRM'ed. I believe many people care
about running their videos where they like. For example, Amazon video does not
work at all on Linux because there is no DRM support there.

~~~
2bitencryption
You're confusing streaming (renting) with purchasing.

On iTunes, EVERYTHING is DRM free. If you purchase it, you get a mp4 (or mov),
and that's it. No DRM.

So nothing is stopping you from paying for much of this content legally.

~~~
mcyukon
Not quite, Music you buy on iTunes does not have DRM and will play anywhere
you copy it too. However it has your name, Apple ID, and email embedded into
the MP3 file and anyone you share the file with can use a tool like exiftool
to look at the embedded info.

Movies are another thing, they appear to be DRM free as long as they are on a
machine that is authorized with the purchasers Apple ID. Once copied to a
computer that isn't authorized, the movie will either refuse to open or ask
you to authorize the computer with the purchasers Apple ID because once again
all your info is embedded into the file. And if that wasn't bad enough, if you
try to play a iTunes bough movie on a external device that does not support
HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Copy Protection) it will also refuse to play.

I got burned by this once. There once was a way to remove all the crap Apple
puts in their movies, but the software that could strip it out hasn't been
updated for ages now.

------
josho
I find it interesting that a Polish man was charged by US laws, rather than
under Polish law.

I think he opened himself to US law by hosting the servers at one point in the
US. Regardless, it is rather fascinating that his first visit to the US could
potentially be from extradition.

~~~
ikeboy
Anyone doing things that affect the US is automatically subject to US
jurisdiction. But whether they can be extradited depends on the particular
treaty the country in question has with the US.

~~~
joering2
Are there any good examples of when this works the other way around? A US
citizen being extradited to another country for non-violent crimes? Something
in tune of computer hacking or hosting a website?

Other than drugs and murders, I have a hard time believing US govt to give out
its citizens to third parties...

~~~
6nf
The USA will not extradite someone for a crime that is not also a crime in the
USA itself.

~~~
gambiting
Does USA ever extradite its own citizens anywhere? Has this ever happened?

~~~
6nf
Yes it happens, not often but it does.

------
spodek
> Assistant Attorney General Caldwell said that KickassTorrents helped to
> distribute over $1 billion in pirated files.

So, two or three files, by Hollywood accounting.

------
blackflame7000
If you think about it, torrent sites are like a modern day robinhood. They
take profits from the rich and bring enjoyment to the poor.

~~~
bathory
i don't remember robin hood lining his pockets with truckloads of money he
made off of the dodgy ads that all these torrent sites serve.

and if its not ads, then it's the donations.

~~~
josho
I suspect robin hood would have had the support of the people that he helped,
so donations is appropriate.

I'd say where the analog breaks down is the media companies aren't exactly
extorting the people, nor price gouging.

~~~
na85
>media companies aren't exactly extorting the people, nor price gouging.

In your opinion.

~~~
josho
Ok, I'll bite. What makes you feel they are extorting consumers or price
gouging?

~~~
blackflame7000
Because they bundle 200 channels of crap with the 5 channels that you actually
want forcing just about everyone to overpay for what they're receiving.

~~~
seanp2k2
Hence the popularity of HBO Go. Showtime, Discovery, History, BBC are also
working on theirs and have launched them in some countries. Sadly, Comcast
refuses to make deals with most of them, so we can't e.g. Get a Discovery
account because we already pay them through Comcast, AT&T, or Verizon despite
a similar deal with nearly every other provider:
[https://www.discoverygo.com](https://www.discoverygo.com) .

At least where I live, we get a choice between AT&T or Comcast, where AT&T is
over land line DSL @768k not guaranteed, plus I'd have to pay for a phone line
vs Comcast at up to 300mbit. Guess which I went with

Anything that accelerates the downfall of the toxic incumbents in the US is a
win in my book.

~~~
dozzie
AT&T, obviously, as Comcast offers connection measured in millibits instead of
kilobits per second.

------
ceejayoz
> 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.

I find it darkly ironic that a legal purchase of music helped them catch the
guy.

~~~
chj
Does that mean that Apple basically feeds every transaction information to
Feds so that they can find this match?

~~~
ceejayoz
Unlikely.

KAT apparently had a Facebook page, so step one was serving Facebook with a
search warrant demanding the list of IP addresses used to administrate that
page.

They likely then went to major companies like Apple, Google, etc. with search
warrants for any billing activity (valuable as it comes with a cardholder name
and address, usually) matching those IP addresses.

~~~
tyjy011621
So he may have been fine by simply using a VPN?

~~~
ceejayoz
Maybe, maybe not. Plenty of VPN providers are in places within the reach of US
law enforcement, and it only takes one slip up to expose yourself.

------
jerrac
Does anyone know if there is data somewhere on how much money has been spent
by governments (specifically the USA) on attacking copyright related stuff?

My main complaint about this is that I'd rather my tax dollars be spent
stopping crime that causes physical harm.

~~~
MichaelBurge
You're free to ask your congressmen to change the copyright laws. Until then,
they should be enforced: Having some manager deprioritize certain crimes
because he thinks they're too expensive to enforce moves power from the
legislative to the executive.

You didn't directly make this distinction, but your point about preferring to
allocate tax dollars to physical crimes would be a strange way to view
changing the law.

~~~
ionised
Your congressman is most likely accepting large sums of money from companies
supporting these draconian laws. Sums you can never hope to compete with.

So break these laws. Break them as much as is possible. Convince others to do
the same.

Civil disobedience is the engine of progress.

~~~
MichaelBurge
If you have a concrete example of this occurring, then consider whether it's
bribery:

18 U.S. Code § 201 - Bribery of public officials and witnesses "directly or
indirectly gives, offers, or promises anything of value to any public
official, former public official, or person selected to be a public official,
for or because of any official act performed or to be performed by such public
official, former public official, or person selected to be a public official;
or

being a public official, former public official, or person selected to be a
public official, otherwise than as provided by law for the proper discharge of
official duty, directly or indirectly demands, seeks, receives, accepts, or
agrees to receive or accept anything of value personally for or because of any
official act performed or to be performed by such official or person; "

My understanding is that prosecutors would be heavily incentivized to find an
underground bribery operation on Congressmen; it would be a career-making
move, and they could make press releases to everyone. People clearly care
about corruption and bribery, as evidenced by this election cycle.

The commenters in this subthread have already agreed that it is good to give
prosecutors extensive leeway in prosecuting crimes, or even deciding whether
something is a crime. And in this particular case, the incentives line up. So
it seems unlikely that congressmen are engaging in outright bribery, with the
prosecutors letting them get away with it.

Again, if you know something that the prosecutors don't, you can contact your
state Attorney General to report a crime. They would probably at least open up
an investigation. For example, it looks like 5 Congressmen have been
prosecuted over the last year alone, so they're hardly immune to the law:

[http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/dem-congressman-
conv...](http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/dem-congressman-convicted-
federal-corruption-charges)

Additionally, the FCPA makes it a crime for US companies to bribe foreign
officials(such as in the Ukraine, where this article's criminal seems to be
based). I've had to sit through 3-4 of these anti-corruption seminars, and it
sure seems like another law that prosecutors would love to follow up on.

My guess is that the lobbyists are simply more persuasive, and seem to care
about the law a lot more than the other types of people who comment on the
law.

~~~
ionised
Lobbying is what I was referring to, and it basically is bribery legalised.

You cannot hope to compete with lobbysists from Disney, the MPAA/RIAA etc.
It's heavily skewed in their favour.

------
dmix
Another black market business opportunity brought to you via fed money. DOJ,
FBI, polish police, etc, etc all spent tax money on this takedown. All working
so the next guy can make a website and make $16 million / year. And it only
takes one guy to run the site apparently.

Who knows maybe the next guy will use Tor, Bitcoin, read Grugq's blog and be
5x as expensive to hunt down. Thanks US tax payers!

~~~
kevindong
The disincentive to start the next pirate website is the fact that the
owners/operators of said website are subject to arrest and jail time. If
actions like the ones in linked article didn't occur, you would find a large
array of piracy websites pop up and operate with impunity. Under such a
scenario, each website would individually earn less.

Yes, piracy websites will always exist, but the purpose of these shutdowns is
to minimize the net profitability of operating piracy websites and to deter
would-be operators. However, the constant shutdowns of piracy websites does
create a perverse incentive in which those that succeed do so at a massive
scale.

~~~
kybernetyk
>The disincentive to start the next pirate website is the fact that the
owners/operators of said website are subject to arrest and jail time.

But it takes only one guy who thinks "they will never get me as I'm smarter"
to have your next KAT/Pirate Bay that will (allegedly) cause billions dollars
of damage.

~~~
dmix
> But it takes only one guy who thinks "they will never get me as I'm smarter"

And fortunately for us, Eastern Europe is full of the these kinds of people.
:)

~~~
ionised
God bless them, the industrious little rapscallions!

------
downandout
This will be interesting to watch. Torrent sites only host torrent files; I'm
sure he'll argue that the DMCA requests were invalid because the people filing
them didn't own copyright to the _torrent_ files, which were the only thing
that the site distributed. Where do we draw the line? Do we prosecute people
for posting a magnet link? If a movie studio puts an MP4 of a not-yet-released
film on its servers, is it illegal to link to it?

It will be an interesting case to watch if he takes it all the way to trial. I
don't think it's nearly as open-and-shut as the DOJ would like everyone to
believe every case it files is though.

~~~
posterboy
Aren't file-hashes derived works?

~~~
downandout
That would be news to me. More likely, they're just going with a conspiracy
argument (and indeed he is charged with conspiracy): he didn't actually commit
copyright infringement himself, but aided others in doing so. Even then,
conspiracy laws have very specific requirements for conviction, and this may
not check all the boxes. It will be interesting to see.

------
megous
So if extradited he may be tried. Now has jury of your peers (fellow citizens)
any meaning in case of trying a non-US citizen? Jurors must be US citizens,
but they will not be his peers, really.

------
steve19
" unlawfully distributing well over $1 billion of copyrighted materials.”

bullshit of course. He simply hosted hashes of torrents that other people
uploaded.

As far as I know he even acknowledged dcma takedowns.

------
LeoPanthera
Well we all switched from TPB to Kickass... which one do we switch to next?

~~~
obj-g
I kind of like TorrentProject. The UI leaves something to be desired (make
sure to use advanced searching) but...

~~~
pYQAJ6Zm
Thank you! TorrentProject indeed looks like the proper alternative to KAT.

------
sergiotapia
So that's why KAT's been down all day.

Two things: If you're going to build a torrent indexer, don't profit from it.
Keep it alive yourself, with NO ads, just plain HTML and JS and images.

Second: This is why I vastly prefer usenet.

~~~
benbristow
But you have to pay to access Usenet - sort of defeats the point. And the
whole retention thing sucks.

~~~
sergiotapia
Sonarr + Usenet + Nzbgeek, no issues whatsoever and I can download my public
access public broadcasted tv shows at my full ISP speed.

------
neurocroc
This is really unfortunate and sad news.

------
ben_jones
If I was making millions of dollars from illicit activities I would practice
incredibly rigorous opsec. I realize modern lifestyles don't align with any
kind of anonymity but come on. Here's a short list:

\- No Apple

\- No Facebook

\- No Google

\- Don't live in a 5 eyes or affiliated country

\- Know the extradition and legal precedent in all countries visited

~~~
cloudjacker
Its really hard to do....

I was shorting the A50 via deutsche bank swaps on an ETF on the NYSE while
China was arresting people for short selling. Is there an arrest warrant for
me valid in Singapore if I happen to visit 3 years from now? What if the TPP
gets ratified?

Fact is, nobody knows.

------
codecamper
When will the feds learn that this is whack a mole.. and every time the mole
improves. (I am 1428x times smarter...)

~~~
rhino369
Whackamole has uses. Sure diehard users will find new trackers but it makes it
harder for the average consumer to pirate.

My dads favorite tv show tracker went down and he couldn't figure out how to
get another private one. He's had to get a dvr and borrow my HBO password.

~~~
AlexCoventry

      > it makes it harder for the average consumer to pirate.
    

How diehard do you have to be to type "Best torrent sites" into google?

~~~
dwaltrip
You are ignoring a few factors. The knowledge on how interpret the results
intelligently, the likely feeling of discomfort or danger of viruses,
confusion about which torrent client to use, etc..

------
cm3
Is there a legal lesson to take from this when it comes to using cloud
services hosted in the US where you can be affected by US laws just because
you hosted a site with links to PDFs from Elsevier in an S3 bucket which
itself happens to be pointing to a US datacenter? I haven't read it all, but
there must be more to it than having used a US hoster that made the guy an
easy litigation target.

~~~
seanp2k2
Sounds like he "does business in the US" in that case. The laws haven't
exactly kept up with modern times and the Internet, but DAs are happy to apply
them liberally to Hoover up more cash whenever they can.

------
DyslexicAtheist
A gentle reminder that the US can hunt you down and punish you under US law
even you have never stepped foot in the country:

>> _" According to a Department of Justice press release sent to Ars, Vaulin
was arrested on Wednesday in Poland. The DOJ will shortly seek his extradition
to the United States."_

~~~
Strom
Yes, but it's not exclusive to the US. This is standard procedure among
allies, and US & Poland are definitely strong allies. The same thing happens
between Germany & Latvia, or Russia & Uzbekistan. Beyond that, this can happen
even between non-allies if the pursuer is powerful enough. The US & Russia are
probably with the widest grasp due to this.

------
novaleaf
Very interesting. It seems he got busted by making the mistake of once-upon-a-
time hosting in the US and Canada, thus providing them grounds for
persecution.

So reading in that context, they would have been free and clear if it were not
for that mistake!

~~~
ZoeZoeBee
^This, if you're working with copyrighted material its best to not leave a
paper trail to a server in the US

~~~
prodigal_erik
Ever? Isn't there a three-year statute of limitations on copyright
infringement?

------
ktta
Here's the paperwork: [https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2996082-Artem-
Vaulin...](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2996082-Artem-Vaulin-
Complaint.html#document/)

PDF link:[https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2996082/Artem-
Vau...](https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2996082/Artem-Vaulin-
Complaint.pdf)

------
msie
So Bittorrent is decentralized but you need a centralized index of the
available torrents? Is this correct? Can you find anything without a site like
KAT? TIA.

~~~
scrollaway
Distributed discovery is possible, but you quickly run into spam/noise
problems. Centralized communities generally have features such as curation and
deduplication (duplication is bad for torrents, as it causes peers to be
spread across multiple slightly-different packages of files, reducing the
available peers for both).

It's not a technical problem, it's a social one.

~~~
supergreg
In a blockchain-based system, proof of work could give users points so they
could spend them to show their trust on a file (or maybe transfer them to
whoever they trust so they can release files with a number of points from the
start). For the duplication problem, solve it like IPFS does, the file's hash
is it's Uri so a duplicate would just point to the same resource. Actually,
people could build KAT-like sites entirely in IPFS and users loading (and
thus, serving them to other users) said sites would be the trust mechanism.

~~~
pablovidal85
Proof of work burns money and I guess users won't pay for some content's
reputation score, there are no incentives to do it other than altruism. POW-
based currencies work well because you can exchange the points for stuff or
services, not because you can spend them within the system (proof of stack
does exactly this indeed and its long-term reliability has been questioned
many times).

------
Grollicus
~15 Years ago I went to to Poland on a student exchange. They held a
presentation about their school and stuff and in the middle of the
presentation theres a popup from emule saying it has finished downloading
something. Mind you this was a school computer on their school network.

I suspect this has changed, but back then they were pretty laid back about
that sort of thing.

------
ungzd
Today such databases of cultural works metadata (movie descriptions, music
album track lists) are illegal because you can use some of metadata (checksum
of files) as identifier to associate it with actual content in p2p network.

What if we modify bittorrent dht or similar thing so it'll use some other
identifier: wikidata id, oclc, instead of "checksum of checksums of files"?
Next day Wikipedia and library catalogs become illegal?

------
LeonM
> “Vaulin is charged with running today’s most visited illegal file-sharing
> website, responsible for unlawfully distributing well over $1 billion of
> copyrighted materials,” Assistant Attorney General Caldwell said in the
> statement.

I can't keep myself from giggling and thinking about this:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZadCj8O1-0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZadCj8O1-0)

------
marty69
Someone has taken a dump of db ? I can't access to api to download dump. I try
to connect on mirrors like
[http://kickasstorrents.video/](http://kickasstorrents.video/) or
[https://kat.host/](https://kat.host/)

------
ForFreedom
In the light of KAT and PirateBay being down, which is the next most
worthwhile torrent website.

------
gggggg11111
After reading the whole PDF document of the complaint one thing jumped out

Here we have Apple, Google, Facebook, Coinbase, FDC Servers and few others
handing over info on email accounts, wallets, hosting records and so on.

~~~
pYQAJ6Zm
So, I imagine, they asked Facebook for a list of IPs having logged to the
Facebook KAT page, and then maybe they went around asking Apple – and who
knows whom else – if they got those IPs in their records?

If it was like this it doesn’t seem proper to me, but IANAL.

------
belorn
> KAT does not host individual infringing files but rather provides links to
> .torrent and .magnet files

What is a .magnet file? My understanding is that .magent link is the key hash
in a distributed hash store (DHT).

~~~
Strom
Pretty sure there is no such thing and the author actually meant magnet links.

------
bekirbek
kat was actually the best torrent website at the moment, and I'd say by far.
This is a very inefficient way for the US government to spend resources and
money, they won't be getting anywhere.

------
androtheos
Time and resources well spent, glad we have our priorities in order. Maybe
Hollywood actually runs the country and not the banks and corporations, ahh,
ahh, I mean elected officials of the government.

------
avree
Can't read this site because of their adblocker detection.

~~~
brute
Use uBlock Origin instead or dive into the wonderful world of adblock-blocker-
blockers (such as Anti-Adblock Killer or Fuck FuckAdBlock)

~~~
avree
I use uBlock, on Safari.

------
liquidise
Perhaps this is pedantic, but i wonder if magnet links provide any legal
securities when compared to actually hosting the torrent files themselves.

------
prirun
I think it's ridiculous that Homeland Security is involved in a copyright
infringement case.

------
sergiotapia
Now that's KickAssTorrents is dead, what alternatives are there?

~~~
jonathansizz
You could try paying people for their work, or else forgo enjoying it.

~~~
sergiotapia
No way to do that in Bolivia.

~~~
jonathansizz
But you can in Boston.

------
bickfordb
I'm surprised he didn't use a virtual currency to sell ads.

------
jbverschoor
So he pays for software and goes to jail :-)

------
roozbeh18
how are newsgroups safe all these years? how comes feds aren't going after
newsgroups?

~~~
dublinben
All news providers comply with the DMCA nowadays. They are legally protected
as hosts of user-generated content.

------
fallo
R.I.P.

------
simbalion
The folks who operate sites like KAT and TPB are heroes.

------
Kenji
Wait, you can get extradited to the US for hosting (magnet) links? Madness.

~~~
ElCapitanMarkla
KA also had torrent files

------
cocotino
Wow, this sucks, I love KAT, what now? TPB is rubbish.

~~~
GadgetJax
Whip out that credit card and start buying stuff instead? Who cares if you
don't use it much, it's all relative.

I like buying CDs and Bluray, then I rip them for everyday use. But its nice
to have something tangible to back it up.

Plus its all legal and protected, since I don't rebroadcast any of the
content, just private enjoyment.

~~~
derefr
Two instances where this isn't practical:

• "Abandonware" — IP held by a company that wants to just sit on it and never
release it again, and probably forgets it exists. Probably the company that
produced the IP was acquired and shut down by the company currently holding
it. It's nearly impossible to find a physical copy of most of this kind of
stuff. I'm not a collector; I don't want to pay $1000 for the only surviving
copy of some old book or NES cartridge or whatever. (Or, rather, I would, but
only as part of a group-buy with the goal of giving the thing to a digital
archivist who will properly preserve it and publish the results to everyone.)

• "Isolationism-ware" – IP that only legally exists in some particular
markets. Usually meaning "some Asian country, and no English-speaking
countries." To acquire such, I'd—at the easiest—have to convince the iTunes
Store that I have a credit card with an address in that country; for the more
indie stuff, I'd have to find someone physically in the country willing to go
be my proxy, searching used book-stores/record-stores for the item and then
sending it to me. Either way, I'd then have to work pretty hard to consume the
thing, given that I don't fully understand the languages involved. Translated
release groups handle all these steps. (I wouldn't mind if I could donate
money to them in a way that would in turn give money to the original IP owner;
I've just never heard of such a setup.)

~~~
witty_username
> Usually meaning "some Asian country, and no English-speaking countries."

In my experience a lot of content is only available in the West (due to
georestrictions).

------
ommunist
Oh shit! And why Google is still running than?

------
stop1234
I just had a crazy brain fart, what if bitTorrent and bitcoin had a child?

------
Rfgakmall
01001110011000000101

------
Rfgakmall
010000000111000101011

------
youngButEager
"Do you have a legal right to distribute this content?"

"No."

"Do you respect the people who spent their personal time and their money to
make the content you distribute?"

"Yes of course."

"No you don't or you would get their permission first."

"I don't think whether I respect the creators or not has anything to do with
making their content available, which is what I want to do."

"Will you please get their permission to distribute what they spent their time
and money -- part of their life -- to create?"

"Nope, sorry. I'm distributing it for free. They can take a hike."

Real sad, these modern morals. Real sad. If you don't respect others, they
ain't gonna respect you.

~~~
ank_the_elder
"How much did Return of the Jedi cost to make?"

"$32.5 million"

"And how much was the revenue?"

"$475 million"

"So you had a $442.5 million profit!"

"No, no. We had no profit - we use Hollywood accounting"

Repeat for Forrest Gump, Spider-Man, etc.

Real sad, these modern morals. Real sad. If you don't respect others, they
ain't gonna respect you.

~~~
youngButEager
You can try but you'll never be able to rationalize stealing from someone.
Especially when you use someone(s) else's actions to try to justify stealing
from them.

You folks are young. If you're lucky enough to learn some of these things, the
fact that a lot of bad karma will suddenly disappear from your life and things
will go shockingly smoothly -- will only be the dessert. The real banquet will
be knowing that you went through a time when you made bad decisions but by a
stroke of genius, realized you were actually hurting someone (financially in
this case) and were able to set aside your selfish wants on their behalf.

One of the best things you will discover is this: when a person is making bad
decisions in one part of their life, they're _rarely_ able to confine that bad
decision making to just one part of life -- they're making bad decisions
across the entire spectrum of their behavior.

That was a cool lesson to learn. I had to become in charge of a lot of young
techies to discover it. A near-karma-free life is waiting for you guys.
Shalom.

~~~
syshum
>>>You can try but you'll never be able to rationalize stealing from someone.
Especially when you use someone(s) else's actions to try to justify stealing
from them.

The supporters of a too-strict, repressive form of copyright often use words
like “stolen” and “theft” to refer to copyright infringement. This is spin,
but they would like you to take it for objective truth.

Under the US legal system, copyright infringement is not theft. Laws about
theft are not applicable to copyright infringement. The supporters of
repressive copyright are making an appeal to authority—and misrepresenting
what authority says.

To refute them, you can point to this real case which shows what can properly
be described as “copyright theft.”

Unauthorized copying is forbidden by copyright law in many circumstances (not
all!), but being forbidden doesn't make it wrong. In general, laws don't
define right and wrong. Laws, at their best, attempt to implement justice. If
the laws (the implementation) don't fit our ideas of right and wrong (the
spec), the laws are what should change.

A US judge, presiding over a trial for copyright infringement, recognized that
“piracy” and “theft” are smear-words.

[https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-
avoid.html#Theft](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Theft)

~~~
youngButEager
You often need permission, then pay royalties, to copyright holders. That is
the theft. In cases where you enjoy then distribute the copyrighted works of
someone without their permission and avoid paying them the required royalties
-- you have stolen money $$ from them. It's the same as eating at a restaurant
then not paying. STEALING. You got a benefit you were supposed to pay for --
and you DID NOT PAY.

Stealing from others habitually is a very bad decision. You can justify it
using any inner dialog you like.

The only caution is this: there _are_ consequences to bad decisions you've
made.

Here is the biggest consequence: if you purposely decide to hurt someone else
(financially in this case), unless you are sociopathic/career criminal, you'll
have an internal conflict about it. You will 'explain it away' so it doesn't
feel as bad: "I do this because the law is unfair" or "everyone else is doing
it".

YOU ARE _LYING_ TO YOURSELF. You know darn well you shouldn't act that way.
Once you start lying to yourself, you're going to green-light lying to
yourself again.

For example: If asked in a job interview with the IRS "let's say we hire you
and you have access to the IRS secure network, and after a week you discover
that a lot of your IRS coworkers change personal data in our computer system
and underpay their taxes. And you find your coworkers also download and seed
torrent clouds with copyrighted material. Which activity would you find
acceptable?"

YOU'D HAVE TO LIE TO THE IRS INTERVIEWER!! See? You'd have to say "I would
never cheat on my taxes. And I download copyrighted material and seed with
copyrighted material all the time."

YOU WOULDN'T SAY THAT!

Nope, you wouldn't get hired if you admitted to the IRS interviewer -- OR ANY
OTHER COMPANY INTERVIEWING YOU FOR A JOB -- that you make illegal,
unauthorized use of copyrighted works.

Why wouldn't you admit to the IRS job interviewer you seed torrents with
copyrighted works without the owner's permission?

BECAUSE YOU KNOW IT'S WRONG. That's why.

RECAP: (1) you're stealing from an artist by not paying royalties on their
film/music/etc. when using sites like KAT; (2) YOU'RE LYING TO YOUR FUTURE
EMPLOYER in a job interview.

Slippery slope. In managing large groups of tech workers, what I discovered
was this: if an employee is unethical or dishonest in one area of life, they
seem to have a hard time restricting those bad decisions to only one area.

~~~
syshum
As a libertarian I would never work for Government Especially the IRS.

>>You often need permission, then pay royalties, to copyright holders. That is
the theft.

You operate under the idea that I believe they are entitled to these things, I
do support or believe copyright is ethical, I do not believe the government
has the ethical authority to tell me how I can arrange the bits on my hard
disk, I do not believe the government has the ethical authority to grant a
person or company the monopoly on an idea or arrangement or words, notes, or
images

