KickassTorrents Owner Faces $1bn Fine for Infringement

A Ukrainian citizen alleged to be the owner of KickassTorrents, currently the biggest online piracy site in the world, has been accused of illegal sharing of movies, music and other content worth over $1bn.

Artyom Vaulin, 30, from Kharkiv, Ukraine, was arrested in Poland and is being sought by US authorities for copyright infringement, money laundering and other charges. Artyom is alleged to own KickassTorrents, which in recent years has become the world’s biggest file-sharing resource. The US criminal complaint against the man reads that he operates the website offering a sophisticated and user-friendly environment in which its users are able to search for and share content protected by copyright. At the moment, KickassTorrents distributes movies, video games, TV shows, music and other content and is estimated to be the 69th most frequently visited site in the world. Artyom Vaulin is charged with running the website responsible for illegal distribution of more than $1bn worth of copyrighted materials. According to the US authorities, he relied on servers located abroad and switched domains following the repeated seizures and civil lawsuits in order to evade law enforcement. After his arrest in Poland, the US officials will seek to extradite him to face charges filed in Chicago court, which ordered the seizure of a bank account and KickassTorrents domain names. Apparently, the US authorities managed to track and identify Artyom Vaulin from records provided by Apple on his iCloud account. Vaulin, aka “tirm”, was involved in designing the original website and ran it through a Ukrainian-based front company Cryptoneat.

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