A legal purchase from the iTunes Store brought troubles for the owners of the world’s biggest torrent site, KickassTorrents (KAT). As reported by TorrentFreak, the 30-year-old Ukrainian Artem Vaulin a.k.a “tirm”, the person who is suspected to be the owner of KAT, was arrested yesterday in Poland and charged for criminal copyright infringement and money laundering. The US now awaits his extradition.
The legal documents reveal that Apple has contributed to the investigation by handing over personal details of Vaulin after the investigator in charge of tracking down the people behind KAT linked the email address he discovered in the WHOIS lookup to an Apple ID. This one was allegedly used by Vaulin to operate KAT. This Apple ID appears to tie all the pieces together in the Vaulin copyright infringement case.
“Records provided by Apple showed that ti**@**.com conducted an iTunes transaction using IP Address 109.86.226.203 on or about July 31, 2015. The same IP Address was used on the same day to login into the KAT Facebook,” the complaint reads.
Vaulin now faces charges of illegally distributing “well over $1 billion of copyrighted materials” the legal document reads.
The KAT.com and .TV domains will likely be seized by Verisign, while the main .CR domain and others will likely be seized as warrants will be issued and sent to the respective authorities.
You can read an in-depth coverage of the complaint on TorrentFreak by following this link.
Want to see more of our stories on Google?
P.S. Want to keep this site truly independent? Support us by buying us a beer, treating us to a coffee, or shopping through Amazon here. Links in this post are affiliate links, so we earn a tiny commission at no charge to you. Thanks for supporting independent Canadian media!
So let me understand this. When Apple has a vested interest in something (i.e. People buying from iTunes instead of downloading from torrents) Apple will cooperate and hand over our personal information — but when it doesn’t affect their bottom line and is just something for, I don’t know national security, they take the moral high ground and show how they protect our privacy. Give me a break.
Are there successful prosecutions of torrent site owners? The piracy is performed by the torrent users – not by the torrent aggregator.
The Pirate Bay guys went to jail.