Kickass Torrents Gets The Megaupload Treatment: Site Seized, Owner Arrested And Charged With Criminal Infringement
from the because-of-course dept
So just as the US government itself is accused of being engaged in massive copyright infringement itself, the Justice Department proudly announces that it has charged the owner of Kickass Torrents with criminal copyright infringement claims. The site has also been seized and the owner, Artem Vaulin, has been arrested in Poland. As with the original Kim Dotcom/Megaupload indictment, the full criminal complaint against Vaulin is worth reading.As with the case against Dotcom/Megaupload, the DOJ seems to ignore the fact that there is no such thing as secondary liability in criminal infringement. That's a big concern. Even though Kickass Torrents does not host the actual infringing files at all, the complaint argues that Vaulin is still legally responsible for others doing so. But that's not actually how criminal copyright infringement works. The complaint barely even shows how Vaulin could be liable for the infringement conducted via Kickass Torrents.
But, of course, that doesn't matter because the guy at Homeland Security Investigations (formerly: ICE: Immigrations & Customs Enforcement) just spoke to the MPAA and the MPAA said that Kickass Torrents had no permission to link to their content. Yes, link.
As part of the investigation, I have communicated with representatives of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) regarding this investigation. The representatives provided me with information the MPAA had developed about KAT, among other websites. The representatives stated that the MPAA closely monitors KAT and that a significant portion of the movies available on KAT are protected by copyright. The representatives also specified that the MPAA has not granted permission to KAT to index, link, frame, transmit, retransmit, provide access to, or otherwise aid or assist those who distribute and reproduce infringing copies of copyrighted motion picture or television content of MPAA members.Here's the thing: most of those things listed above are not rights granted by the copyright act. The copyright act is pretty specifically limited to a few rights, including reproduction and distribution. But, again, note the games played in the complaint: "index, link, frame, transmit, retransmit, provide access to" don't directly infringe on the stated copyright exclusive rights (yes, there are some cases where some of the above may infringe on some of the exclusive rights, but it's not particularly cut and dry). So instead, the government tosses in this "otherwise aid or assist those who distribute and reproduce infringing copies of copyrighted motion picture or television content."
So, you see, once again, the government is creating a form of secondary liability for copyright infringement that does not exist in the law. That's a problem. Because that's not how criminal copyright law works. At all.
Furthermore, the complaint goes on about how KAT, as it calls Kickass Torrents, rejected DMCA takedown notices for a variety of reasons, but leaves out the fact that KAT is not an American company and is not under the jurisdiction of US laws. So I'm not entirely clear why US copyright laws apply here. The best they can do is note that they found a few servers that were apparently in Chicago.
The complaint spends lots of time on the fact that KAT makes a fair bit of money from advertising revenue. But, again, I'm not entirely clear how that's relevant to the claim of criminal copyright infringement. The implicit argument is clearly "people go to KAT to get infringing content, the site makes advertising from all that traffic, thus the revenue is ill-gotten gains." But... again that relies on the idea that KAT itself is engaged in criminal behavior. Creating a popular tool for finding content -- some of which may be infringing -- and then making money from advertising, are separate things. It seems wrong to make this weird if->then conditional assumption that just because the site made lots of money it was infringing.
No one is suggesting that Kickass Torrents was not regularly used by individuals to infringe on copyrights. It was. A lot. And you can argue how horrible that is and how it was killing Hollywood and all that -- but the specifics here do matter. The same arguments were made about the VCR for years. After all, the MPAA insisted that it was used exclusively to infringe on content for years until they finally realized that it was a good idea to release content for the home video market. And, again, the US government isn't allowed to make up criminal liability concepts that aren't actually in the law. They, and their supporters, of course will now argue that it's not about secondary liability, but about "aiding and abetting." But that argument doesn't fly either. The standards for aiding and abetting are much more involved -- and would require that the actual infringement be criminal. But that won't fly, because the individuals downloading via Kickass Torrents weren't violating criminal copyright law themselves.
In other words, the DOJ is trying to argue that helping a bunch of people engaged in civil copyright infringement magically turns into criminal aiding and abetting. But that's not how the law works.
Meanwhile, the DOJ's press release on this is filled with all the usual insane bluster:
"Copyright infringement exacts a large toll, a very human one, on the artists and businesses whose livelihood hinges on their creative inventions," said U.S. Attorney Fardon. "Vaulin allegedly used the Internet to cause enormous harm to those artists. Our Cybercrimes unit at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago will continue to work with our law enforcement partners around the globe to identify, investigate and prosecute those who attempt to illegally profit from the innovation of others."Funny. Is he also going to charge the US Navy for its massive copyright infringement? Or is that not the kind of copyright infringement harm Fardon goes after?
"Vaulin is charged with running today’s most visited illegal file-sharing website, responsible for unlawfully distributing well over $1 billion of copyrighted materials," said Assistant Attorney General Caldwell. "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."The $1 billion of copyrighted materials is a nice touch, but again represents merely the estimated cover price, not any actual losses to the industry. Not that the DOJ wants to admit that. But the next guy is even worse, no longer just claiming that over $1 billion was distributed, but directly stating that Vaulin stole $1 billion.
"Artem Vaulin was allegedly running a worldwide digital piracy website that stole more than $1 billion in profits from the U.S. entertainment industry," said Executive Associate Director Edge. "Protecting legitimate commerce is one of HSI’s highest priorities. With the cooperation of our law enforcement partners, we will continue to aggressively bring to justice those who enrich themselves by stealing the creative work of U.S. artists."Aren't law enforcement people supposed to actually know the law? There was no stealing. There may have been copyright infringement using the tool that Vaulin built, but that's not stealing.
"Investigating cyber-enabled schemes is a top priority for CI," said Chief Weber. "Websites such as the one seized today brazenly facilitate all kinds of illegal commerce. Criminal Investigation is committed to thoroughly investigating financial crimes, regardless of the medium. We will continue to work with our law enforcement partners to unravel this and other complex financial transactions and money laundering schemes where individuals attempt to conceal the true source of their income and use the Internet to mask their true identity."Illegal commerce? It was basically a search engine for free content. What illegal commerce happened there?
Yes, yes, lots of infringement happened via the site. No one denies that. But having law enforcement folks stand up and make clueless statements like this suggest they don't even understand what Kickass Torrents did, and they just want to puff themselves up and look good for Hollywood.
Meanwhile: does anyone really believe that this move will cause anyone who used KAT to suddenly go back to purchasing movies?
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Filed Under: aiding and abetting, artem vaulin, copyright, criminal copyright infringement, dhs, doj, hsi, ice, secondary liability
Companies: kickass torrents, mpaa
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This shit won't stop until some politicians child draws a Mohammad cartoon and gets dragged out of their townhouse in Florida to be stoned to death in Saudi Arabia. WTH are we thinking?
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PgSX-WD96Q
The U.S. does whatever they want whenever they want and they don't ever consider the possible consequences.
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He just outlawed every church that isn't Orthodox, so he's proven he's not really interested in human rights.
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In other words
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Unfortunately, no.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160601/07432834592/another-court-says-law-enforcement-officer s-dont-really-need-to-know-laws-theyre-enforcing.shtml
It's got to be the only job where you can be completely ignorant about what you're supposed to be enforcing, and it's perfectly acceptable.
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Site destroyed, owner arrested, message sent.
Much like MU winning the legal case would be something they'd like to be able to crow about, but they've already accomplished what they set out to do, and if all it cost them was some 'creative' interpretation of the law that's a price they're more than willing to pay.
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I'm waiting to see the millions recovered from perviously closed and seized p2p services. Because there is none. TorrentFreak did a great job analyzing how much was going into the bitcoin wallets notorious piracy sites put up and I haven't seen a single one that got more than a few hundred dollars in YEARS and it's common knowledge by now that the ads that go in these sites are the trash of the trash and pay virtually nothing.
So this guy will actually be royally screwed. Not because he is guilty of something for society has already given sharing a green light for years now. No, he will be royally screwed because he doesn't have the money to defend himself. Money wins.
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They are counting on it.
It's also a test balloon to see if they can get away with it.
If Dotcom wants to be noble as fuck he can supplement KTs legal war chest since a success will set an operational precedent.
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Know the law?
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Re: Know the law?
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No, The Almighty Copyright must be protected at all costs lest the very planet itself implode from the complete and utter death of creativity in all it's forms.
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Damn right! How else are us Americans gonna make a living?
When we manufacture so little we have no choice but to rely in intellectual property to prop up the economy.
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The US is manufacturing more now than at any time in US history. What's changed is what we manufacture -- in the past, it was mostly consumer goods. Now, it's mostly big-ticket things like supercomputers, very large machinery, etc. We still outproduce every other nation. The next largest producer is China. According to 2010 figures, China produced about $1.5 trillion worth, and we produced about $2.1 trillion worth.
That said, the number of manufacturing jobs has fallen from about 19.5 million in 1980 to around 11.5 million in 2010.
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Also, are your manufacturing $$ numbers adjusted for inflation?
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Irrelevant
Law enforcement requires the law like a butterfly requires butter. Just ask Kim Dotcom.
And they follow the law like a climber follows a route. As long as you stay within arm's reach of the bolted line (and that includes "dynamic moves" where you completely leap off and regain ground later) it is considered a successful ascent.
Only snails need to cover all the ground. So what if there are a few logic leaps? That's an important skill if you want to get far. And nobody's logic leaps are larger than that of U.S. law enforcement.
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Also, since secondary liability is being created here, isn't Google next in line? I mean, if it weren't for Google letting me search for torrent sites that let me search for torrents, there would be no infringement to begin with.
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Profit margin
"unlawfully distributing well over $1 billion of copyrighted materials" - so retail price > $1b
"stole more than $1 billion in profits" - and it's all profit.
Really cheap servers and connectivity, perhaps ?
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"that stole more than $1 billion in profits from the U.S. entertainment industry"
... if he can't distinguish between gross revenue and profits.
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1. Why does Homeland Security have anything to do with copyright?
2. What impact is this going to have on people downloading?
The answers to me are: 1. The entertainment industry has WAY too much influence in government and 2. None.
So thank you, government, for wasting probably millions in taxpayer dollars which have purchased us exactly nothing.
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In the Dotcom raid the ICE thugs were clearly MPAA mercenaries.
Now it's an established trend. US law enforcement agents can turn into mobster mugs when the price is right.
And big media is so very, very rich.
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Re: In the Dotcom raid the ICE thugs were clearly MPAA mercenaries.
Can turn into? I'm pretty sure that's the default mode these days.
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Setting a precedent
If the US can apply its copyright laws in Poland and arrest a Polish citizen, why can't China apply its censorship laws in the US and arrest a US citizen? Or better yet, why can't Iran apply it's Muslim/ Sharia laws in the US and start arresting US citizens?
Where does this kind of international law end?
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Re: Setting a precedent
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If they use US law against the site (owner) wouldn't the "you are not responsible for what user upload to you site" apply too?
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I think this one is not as flimsy as Kim Dotcom. Maybe they've learned from past mistakes.
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Two, he did not upload any infringing content. He had links, to torrents, that may have themselves been infringing. That is still secondary copyright infringement. And there remains a question as to why the supposed ignoring of DMCA notices is a big thing. The DMCA does not require the Delisting of links no matter what google started doing. Everything ive heard, and why everyone compares this to Megaupload, is that their case hinges on the ignoring of DMCA notices, not the upload of content.
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Apparently not. If they had, they would ensure the exact information they've collected and the specific reasons why this is a criminal charge are well known, as well as the reasoning for arresting a foreign national in a foreign soil for breaking US laws.
But, that's not happened so they are not getting support from a lot of people who should be supporting their cause. Yet again, most people have no problem with people actually profiteering from piracy being caught and prosecuted, it's the overreach, flimsy evidence and collateral damage that most object to. The impression is that US authorities don't care how many rights they step over so long as some supposed profit for a corporation is protected.
It wasn't just the flimsy case against Dotcom that was so objectionable, nor the shutting down of a service that was used for all sorts of legal activities with no recourse for users. It was the police raid on foreign soil at the behest of a private business, seizure of the evidence he needed to defend himself and attempt to extradite him to a country he'd never visited to appear in front of what seemed to be a kangaroo court. Dotcom is not a likeable man, but the actions of US authorities turned him into a folk hero for people who otherwise despised him, so badly were his rights respected.
Even if none of those things are true in the current case, if they had learned from past mistakes they would know not to make it look like the same things again. They failed on a number of points.
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"From what I read KAT was just a search engine, no tracker, no hosting."
The famous loophole!
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That's not worse that's logically sound, if someone is breaking the law you go after them, not a third-party only lightly involved, unless you're just looking for an easy win/target.
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They go after the easy targets because it's profitable for even less work.
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Why spend a bunch of resources narrowing down the potential guilty suspect(s) from a group of ten when you can just accuse all ten in the hopes that the guilty party is in the group?
When it comes to copyright trolling especially there is a very high incentive not to care about accuracy, as the aim is not to stop infringement it's to profit off of accusations of it. Innocent or guilty, all that matters is how many people they can get to settle and avoid a costly court battle defending themselves, which means the more names they can get the better.
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https://torrentfreak.com/top-torrent-sites-respect-copyright-takedowns-just-like-google-120604/
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Try never. Same people who keep Google shares also keep MAFIAA shares.
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Apple?
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Oh, wahwahwah...
However, reality is different. Almost every popular torrent listed on the site was pirated. TV shows and such were sorted into special pages with information provided, which clearly showed that the site owners and maintainers knew what was on their site.
It's also clear that the guy was selling advertising on the site knowing that the attraction was piracy, and was charging more for popular pages. Knowing the material was pirated, knowing that people are coming because they can get illegal content, and selling ads based on this a direct infringement situation. They don't have to actually rip of the content or host it, the only have to profit from it.
Put it another way: Do you honestly think that KickAssLegalSoftwareDownloads would have been able to collect millions in ad fees?
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Re: Oh, wahwahwah...
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Re: Oh, wahwahwah...
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"Do you expect a surge in DVD purchases?"
Your answer is here:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160708/18024234925/as-uk-piracy-falls-to-record-lows-govern ment-still-wants-to-put-pirates-jail-10-years.shtml
As piracy becomes less attractive and the legal services become more attractive... and if the pirate versions are harder to reach and harder to use, you can guess the rest.
"Do you really think anyone will respect copyright (more) because of this shenanigans?"
I am betting that more than a few people will consider getting out of the business of selling downloads. I am thinking that having pirate links a LITTLE harder to get to make slightly change the flow of the tide. Think of it as a butterfly effect thing, except of course this is just about the biggest butterfly of them all.
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Re: Oh, wahwahwah...
Can you perhaps cite the part of the law that states a percentage of links that need to be infringing in order for that not to applicable?
"Knowing the material was pirated, knowing that people are coming because they can get illegal content, and selling ads based on this a direct infringement situation"
Citation for the applicable law? Apologies for not believing the bare assertions of a proven liar, but that's the hole you've dug for yourself.
"Put it another way: Do you honestly think that KickAssLegalSoftwareDownloads would have been able to collect millions in ad fees?"
CNet seems to do OK, as does Sourceforge and a number of other free software repositories. I don't know figures for ad income from those sites off the top of my head, but if your implication is that it's impossible to run a free-to-end-user software download site providing software free of charge, reality disagrees with you.
Do you have any defence for your claims, or are you as ever talking out of your ass and creating a fictional reality where you can attack this site for imaginary indiscretions?
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There is no hard and fast number. It's a question of inevitable knowledge. If your site is entirely nothing but likes to pirated material, it's hard to deny that you know it. Heck, all you had to do was look at their most popular download list, and you would see. I am sure that the site admins did that regularly. For that matter, in selling advertising for high rates, I am sure they were very much aware which pages and which downloads were generating the most attention, traffic, and therefore profit.
if those top files had all been unix distributions and free android apps, then they might have some deniability.
"Citation for the applicable law? Apologies for not believing the bare assertions of a proven liar, but that's the hole you've dug for yourself."
Paul, I cannot and will not spend all the time required to teach you the basics of criminal conspiracies. Knowledge of and profiting from a crime is in itself a crime. Selling ad space on pages full of pirate downloads - knowing fully well that they are pirated material - creates that basic conspiracy.
"CNet seems to do OK, as does Sourceforge and a number of other free software repositories."
You can check Alexa to see the deal. Kat dot CR was ranked in the top 20 websites in the world. CNET as a whole was around #120, but downloads only account for about a third of their hits. So there is a major order of magnitude thing at play here.
Just as importantly, there are literally hundreds or thousands of torrent search sites, including kat clones and mirrors. Their actual traffic position was much more likely on the edge of top 10. CNET is an exceptional case, a rare site indeed. There are only a very few sites in that marketplace (like Tucows), and otherwise few get involved.
"Do you have any defence for your claims, or are you as ever talking out of your ass and creating a fictional reality where you can attack this site for imaginary indiscretions?"
Actually, your assertions seem to be the sort of crap you always come up with, trying to poke holes and ignoring the proverbial elephants in the room. Perhaps it would be to your benefit to read the criminal complaint and actually try to understand it (you can use the dictionary for the bigger words, if that will help).
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I'm still not seeing a citation, only a change in the parameters of your claims. I wonder why.
"Paul, I cannot and will not spend all the time required to teach you the basics of criminal conspiracies. "
You have enough time to write paragraph after paragraph of personal attacks, unsupported theories and outright fiction, day after day, month after month. Why not spend the time writing honest comments with citations supportable evidence? There must be reason why you spout theories like the ones you do, many of which are obvious fictions, and it's not because you lack the time to back your claims up.
"You can check Alexa to see the deal"
Why Alexa? What does an Alexa rank have to do with the fact that you made an assertion that was easily proven wrong by simply looking at some famous free software sites?
"There are only a very few sites in that marketplace"
Yet, in the comment I responded to, you implied that none would exist. Now it is possible but might be hard? It's a mature marketplace that's gravitated toward some major players, like all mature marketplaces do? Strange that you'd move the goalposts like that. Almost as if you were being deliberately dishonest...
"ignoring the proverbial elephants in the room"
Such as? It's interesting that you still insist on making bare, unsupported assertions in response to people noting that you only ever make unsupported assertions.
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That obviously wouldn't fit his agenda.
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Really?
How many cyberstalkers have you stopped?
How many ransomware groups have you broken up?
How many producers and distributors of child porn have you shut down? (Catfishing the pathetic schlub in his basement for possession doesn't count.)
How many DDoS extortion gangs have you arrested?
How ya coming with that SWATting problem?
No, no, I understand. Media billionaires and rich movie stars possibly losing out on that last million dollars is far more important than real hurt being visited on real people.
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-Hollywood's best buddies
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American companys may apply it so as not to get sued
by record companys even if they own websites or service outside the us .
The doj is ruthless ,it has to somehow turn this into a
criminal case in order to get an eu citizen extradited to
the us .
A uk citizen was not extradited to the usa a few years ago
for hacking as the uk court considered it would be overly cruel punishment for him to be sent to a us prison for
hacking a us based company.
There are many things legal in the uk that are not legal in the us ,
eg selling beer to an 18 year old man.
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This is very Mobster.
They didn't organize crime, organized agencies just went criminal.
And now they're flagrantly ignoring the order they were sworn to protect.
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No wonder people are losing all respect for copyrights.
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If that actually led to those charges, then I call foul. The repercussion should be that the site loses safe harbor protection from charges that were already in play, not that it would lead to new charges.
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The Dotcom case was / is justice theater...
Essentially we have some pissy nobles wanting someone to suffer so they arranged it. It's good to be the king.
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the “start to purchase” trap
Careful: You’re walking into their trap. Numerous studies showed that people who get movies via filesharing are already the top customers. So the people who used KAT won’t “go back to purchasing”. Rather they will either keep purchasing movies — or stop.
The correct question would be: Meanwhile: what do you think how many people will stop buying movies, seeing how they are called criminals all over again and seeing how even people in foreign countries are attacked for providing a level of convenience the media companies fail to provide?
Or just because they lose interest in the media genre.
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I also think it would be in Kim Dotcoms best interest to help pay for legal help. If Vaulin can get off it could set a good precedent for Kim.
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Meanwhile police officers are still shooting people & not having to file reports with us as required by law.
Any questions?
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Probably not. Instead, KAT users will find alternatives.
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i may go back to not watching movies at all.
Frankly, movies and music in the mainstream are getting formula again like the 80s. A Hollywood blackout might serve.
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-govt
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Hollywood to government: Save us from the Interwebs or we'll go out of business and America will be fucked!
Nothing like having it both ways.
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Important Update About Kickass Torrents
Long live KickassTorrents, Long live Freedom !
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This is the new address of Kickass torrents. They are using different proxy servers. You can find all the latest content on this site. You can see change in their domain name, that is because this domain is getting operated from a different country. Finally, it doesn’t matter whether Artem Vaulin is present or not.. Torrenting MUST Continue!
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Even though KAT did not host on its servers the torrents it did link to it knowingly.
Torrent is a good way to share but what a particular torrent pulls should be in question here. If its the new free distro its ok, if its the unreleased Catwoman movie then its not.
Online crimes like theft always get overlooked on technicalities. Honestly, that should change.
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No, fuck... back to using TPB...
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Piracy off the high seas.
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can a DMCA-compliant torrent site *EVER* be 'compliant' enough?
Also, the site's search function had many words banned (including many common non-infringing words) so you had to use Google to find many titles on KAT. (but then, the torrents would ususally be deleted by the time Google crawled the site)
This should serve as a lesson to all torrent site owners, that bending over backwards to please copyright enforcers achieves nothing whatsoever, and that they'd be no worse off by going full-on Pirate Bay and simply ignoring (or better yet, mocking) copyright demands.
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Re: can a DMCA-compliant torrent site *EVER* be 'compliant' enough?
Have a search engine for your service? You're enabling people to try to find infringing files.
Don't have a search engine for your service? You're simply trying to hide all the infringing files.
As you say, whether a site bends over backwards or not they're still treated the same, so they really have no incentive at all to play nice and go out of their way to be 'helpful'.
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Dotcom
My one concern is that Lawyers are taking this fight up ad nauseum, because they see it as a way to make their bank statements look healthy; they are not waiting for instruction handed down, but just staring the suits, and we can only hope that this is just as expensive and costly - time and staff - for them as well. Now that search engines don't have to, or are not responsible for the content of their searches, we, hopefully, are going to see the above mentioned lawyers going after smaller and more fishes that, in the end, will put them at the counters of Chick-fil-A's and greeting Wal-Mart customers. Let's hope it costs them this much for being Shakespearean in their litigious efforts.
We don't need a wall. we need Lawyers to get more frivolous.
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"We have altered the definition of the law. Pray we do not alter it further."
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Re: FTFY
"We have altered the definition of the law. As 'prey', we do not alter it further."
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Who cares what the law actually says
Also, I hope someone is taking names of the government agents involved and making a list. Accountability can be a bitch when your immunity wears off. "Was following orders" is no excuse either.
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Internet free range of old MEET Internet of modern age, where we connoiseurs and collectors of free content no longer matter. The lawyers invaded the vast galaxy of commercialism and of course they are working for them.
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When men with guns show up and haul you off on threat of death, none of that really matters.
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Welcome to the The United States of Hollywood
After all, since thye're making up dollar numbers to claim as infringement-based revenue loss, imagine the amount of imaginairy dollars the MPAA pretends it loses to Evil Canadian Infringers every year!!!
I think this is just the MPAA demanding - through its corporate subsidiary, the American Department of Justice - that Canada obey the demands of its southern 5 Eyes partner, and change its laws, so Hollywood can start suing Canadians for the big bucks too.
If you can only make massively expensive shitty films that only sell well when nobody knows how bad they are, and its obvious that little startups can make better films and that your days are numbered as a gateway controller, its always nice to have a little nest egg stashed away, like say a few thousand copyrights that can make Hollywood the future's biggest US Copyright Troll.
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KAT lives again.
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