The world's largest torrent site has been taken offline by a multi-national law enforcement action, with the owner of the site now facing extradition and criminal sanction in the United States.
KickassTorrents (KAT) surpassed The Pirate Bay as the world's most popular pirated torrent directory, and while past efforts have managed to take the site offline, or force it to move to a different domain name, the site remained active and growing. Until last week, that is, when the U.S. government seized the site's domain names, and Polish authorities arrested the Ukrainian owner of the site, 30-year-old Artem Vaulin.
Vaulin now faces extradition to the U.S. where he faces criminal sanctions for enabling, as the U.S. government alleges, over $US1 billion in damages relating to copyright infringement.
Authorities appears to have obtained vast amounts of data in the seizures, including full copies of KAT's hard-drives. With so much seized, it could make a comeback for KAT impossibly hard, although many mirrors and impostors have since sprung up to either support KAT, or to take advantage of the situation.
With authorities in possession of vital data, users and uploaders to the site could also face further criminal actions, as the full implication of one of the biggest piracy take-downs in history is yet to be felt.
[via TorrentFreak]
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