Artem Vaulin, the alleged owner of Kick Ass Torrents (KAT), the world’s largest torrent site has been arrested in Ukraine.
The 30-year-old has been charged with conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and two counts of criminal copyright infringement.
KAT which is an important platform to download movies, music, and more has copyrighted materials worth over 1 billion dollars and over the years, it has become the most-used torrent site on the internet even relegating the once popular Pirate Bay.
A statement released by the U.S. Department of Justice website accused Vaulin of stealing; “More than 1 billion in profits from the U.S. entertainment industry adding that KAT receives more than 50 million unique visitor hits a month.
KAT uses BitTorrent technology for peer-to-peer file sharing, and in November 2014, overtook Pirate Bay as the most visited torrent directory in the world. The site does not host any illegal content itself, but only provides links to files that can download unauthorized copies of content from other users’ computers. It has been embroiled in legal tangles often, changing its domain several times in the last five years.
