AfterDawn: News

U.S. indicts three alleged operators of KickassTorrents

The U.S. Department of Justice has named three alleged operators of KickassTorrents in a grand jury indictment this week.

One of the men was already named after he was arrested last month by Polish authorities, while two new names have appeared. All three men are from Ukraine.



According to the DoJ, KickassTorrents was a commercial website that facilitated and promoted the reproduction and distribution of copyrighted content over the Internet without authorization of the copyright owners.

In addition to KickassTorrents, the three individuals were also linked to a number of other sites by the DoJ, including Leechmonster.com, Solarmovie, iWatchfilm.com, Hippomovies.com and Torcache.

The three men used to sites to generate millions of dollars in revenue, according to the indictment, which also details payments made for advertising to back accounts operated by the men.

Source: TorrentFreak

Written by: James Delahunty @ 25 Aug 2016 12:56

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• 17 comments

• Vancouversailor

  So the US DOJ continues it's futile attempts to stop the free flow of information, documents, movies, music and what have you on the internet.
  Futile because, as many of us know the modern internet was built on the foundations of ARPNET, originally designed as a backup communications system for the US military and civil administration in the event of a full out nuclear war. One of the key instructions to the programmers was to make sure the flow did not stop at any obstacle, but circumvented it. (Hence the later references to a spider's web, or 'the web'.)
  The Iranians and Chinese have gone all out in attempts to block the flow of news through the internet to its citizens, with varying but never full success. The movie executives are going to have many, many more sleepless nights waiting for the US justice system to accomplish what no other nation has been able to do.
  

  25.8.2016 18:11 #1

• skeil909

  Hollyweird needs to quit wasting it's time and money on these futile efforts and start working on putting out some decent shows. 98% of the crud they're releasing isn't even worth watching for free.
  

  25.8.2016 18:45 #2

• Vancouversailor

  I would tend to agree with Skeil909 on that one. We have pretty much unlimited access to movies, including all the latest, through streaming video sites. Overall my wife and I agree that for every good, memorable movie there are two dozen stinkers and three dozen sleepers, sleepers being not as bad as stinkers but so boring they put you to sleep. So we end up watching reruns of oldies but goodies like Fried Green Tomatoes, Second Hand Lions, The Third Man or Big Fish.
  

  25.8.2016 19:16 #3

• hearme0

  This article makes no mention of a particular detail, likely because it doesn't exist but...this is only "charging" them. Those in the Ukraine will likely tell our gov't to GFY and carry on.
  
  Don't think we have extradition treaty with Ukraine.......could be wrong though.

  25.8.2016 23:42 #4

• hearme0

  Originally posted by skeil909: Hollyweird needs to quit wasting it's time and money on these futile efforts and start working on putting out some decent shows. 98% of the crud they're releasing isn't even worth watching for free. And sadly this comment merits a double post by me.........Ho hum.....
  
  This is nothing more than a bullsh*t excuse and justification for you to rampantly pirate and swipe anything you want without EVER giving anything back, a leech if you will, and be okay with it.
  
  Yet you go and watch the movie, or buy it anyway.
  
  Can you say "sociopath"?

  25.8.2016 23:46 #5

• Vancouversailor

  hearne0 or should I say stupidme0?
  You are making the assumption that anyone who has access to watch new movies and critique them must be viewing pirated copies, which justifies your new stupefied handle.
  Why don't you stick to the topic of this discussion - the poor quality of recent movie releases - and confine your anal retention routines to your bathroom at home?
  
  
  

  25.8.2016 23:50 #6

• hearme0

  Originally posted by Vancouversailor: hearne0 or should I say stupidme0?
  You are making the assumption that anyone who has access to watch new movies and critique them must be viewing pirated copies, which justifies your new stupefied handle.
  Why don't you stick to the topic of this discussion - the poor quality of recent movie releases - and confine your anal retention routines to your bathroom at home?
  
  Nope......simply assuming that anyone that, 1. is on this site, 2. is commenting particularly on THIS article, 3. defending taking a torrent site down and...............4. (this one is directly tied to 3), following up said defense with comments like "If Hollywood produced better movies then I wouldn't jack'em) which brings me back to my orig statement now STFU!
  
  Thank you;)
  
  
  P.S. And the topic of discussion is about the ARTICLE and the ARTICLE is about KAT going down.

  25.8.2016 23:55 #7

• pmshah

  What I find very strange is why it took them so long. Most of these sites display some kind of advertisements of prominent sites. They do get paid for every eye-ball they catch. Why is there no attempt to penalise these advertisers? I am pretty sure ther is apaper trail for the money changing hands.
  
  Originally posted by hearme0: Originally posted by skeil909: Hollyweird needs to quit wasting it's time and money on these futile efforts and start working on putting out some decent shows. 98% of the crud they're releasing isn't even worth watching for free. And sadly this comment merits a double post by me.........Ho hum.....
  
  This is nothing more than a bullsh*t excuse and justification for you to rampantly pirate and swipe anything you want without EVER giving anything back, a leech if you will, and be okay with it.
  
  Yet you go and watch the movie, or buy it anyway.
  
  Can you say "sociopath"? IMDB is supposed to be fairly reliable guide to the movie ratings. What I have particularly notices is the fact that for any movie or TV show to get high (7+) ratings it has to have at least one of the following content, zombies, werewolves, blood+gore, vampires, extreme violence, totally implausible action or overt sex. None of these interest me. So how is one to really take in a "good" movie of his / her interest without shelling out huge amount of money and find that it was down the drain? Case in point would be Bastille Day and the comments on the movie.

  26.8.2016 00:43 #8

• Vancouversailor

  Well if the point of this thread is to discuss actions against piracy of movies on the internet, the action by the US DoJ completely missed the mark.
  I guess the movie companies are still reeling from their rebuttal when they tried to have the Swedish courts ban the use of the domain name 'the piratebay.se' and the Swedish supreme court had to remind the US lawyers representing the movie companies that Sweden is a sovereign state not a US state... Funny that just after that thepiratebay.org showed up hosted in the US.
  Again the internet was designed to be a resilient communications system that resists censorship so tough luck to the Japs running Hollywood.
  

  26.8.2016 04:37 #9

• ThePastor

  "What I find very strange is why it took them so long."
  Because what they are doing is hardly an illegal act.
  A "torrent" by itself is not copyrighted material. It is an index file. By these same criteria, Google, Bing and other search engines, not to mention the DDL sites and countless, COUNTLESS other websites are as guilty as KAT.
  These guys got the treatment because they pissed someone off, or because they were the most popular after the Pirate Bay got wiped out. Most likely the latter. They are probably just going after whoever takes over when the one goes down. So, KAT is down. Whatever site pops up to be the go-to site in the next 6 months will probably be the next one to go down.
  

  Oh, Im sorry... Did the middle of my sentence interrupt the beginning of yours?

  26.8.2016 13:13 #10

• ivymike

  KickassTorrents is gonna kick...your...ass!!!
  

  26.8.2016 19:22 #11

• Vancouversailor

  ThePastor:
  ThePirateBay never got wiped out except maybe in some movie company executive's wet dreams. In fact not only are they alive and well at their old Swedish domain http://www.thepiratebay.se but they now are also registered as http://www.thepiratebay.org.
  There is a reason they call themselves the most resilient torrent site on the internet.
  

  27.8.2016 05:16 #12

• Bozobub

  Originally posted by hearme0: This article makes no mention of a particular detail, likely because it doesn't exist but...this is only "charging" them. Those in the Ukraine will likely tell our gov't to GFY and carry on.
  
  Don't think we have extradition treaty with Ukraine.......could be wrong though.
  
  
  The owner/admin was busted in Poland, and extradition is proceeding apace.

  28.8.2016 18:12 #13

• megadunderhead

  i really don't care about this your not stoping private vpn servers and even file sharing sites so you basically are stupid
  

  10.9.2016 20:53 #14

• ivymike

  The actions of my gov't makes me ashamed, smh.
  
  I sincerely hope Kickass Torrents makes a full recovery......
  

  10.9.2016 20:56 #15

• KillerBug

  Originally posted by ivymike: The actions of my gov't makes me ashamed, smh.
  
  I sincerely hope Kickass Torrents makes a full recovery...... I like the honesty of my local government; there is a sign saying "For Sale" on the front lawn of the town hall. Presidents and congressional "representatives" should be forced to wear pins that say the same...that way they would be forced to be honest at least once in their lives.

  11.9.2016 00:53 #16

• Vancouversailor

  Originally posted by Bozobub: Originally posted by hearme0: This article makes no mention of a particular detail, likely because it doesn't exist but...this is only "charging" them. Those in the Ukraine will likely tell our gov't to GFY and carry on.
  
  Don't think we have extradition treaty with Ukraine.......could be wrong though.
  
  
  The owner/admin was busted in Poland, and extradition is proceeding apace. Poland is a member of NATO and has various treaties with the US - something that the Ukranian who is being extradited should have checked out before visiting there. However, neither Russia nor Ukraine have any such treaties with the US which is why most of the world's online scam and illegal activities operate from there.
  

  11.9.2016 04:17 #17