One of the most popular piracy sites, KickassTorrents, appears to have hit the buffers. Its alleged owner, Artem Vaulin, has been arrested in Poland, with the US government having requested his extradition to face charges of criminal copyright infringement and money laundering.
Several of KickassTorrents’ domain names have ben seized, as well as a bank account associated with the site. “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 Leslie Caldwell. The complaint also claims that KickassTorrents attracts more than 50 million unique monthly visitors, and generates annual ad revenues of between $12.5m and $22.3m. Caldwell noted that the site has been forced to hop domains and servers regularly, under pressure from rightsholders. “His arrest in Poland, however, demonstrates again that cybercriminals can run, but they cannot hide from justice,” he said.
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