Kickass Torrents shutdown news update 2016: Rumored founder Artem Vaulin could go to jail for life; fake websites pop up
Kickass Torrents (KAT) is now extinct. The website that has served as a directory for torrent files and magnet links to facilitate peer-to-peer file sharing was shut down by authorities for online piracy.
According to reports, the U.S. government tracked down the rumored founder of the site, Artem Vaulin, and arrested him for the serious case of piracy and illegal distribution of digital content over the web. Vaulin may be sentenced to life imprisonment for several cases of copyright law violation and money laundering.
But Vaulin's fight is not over. Apparently, the 30-year old Ukranian is said to have approached Ira Rothken to hire as his lead legal defense. Rothken wrote a letter to the Department of Justice one time wherein he said that the accusations brought up against Vaulin are "baseless" and cannot be criminally liable because the U.S. law does not have a "statute of indirect or secondary infringement."
Rothken puts it as "questioning the validity of the complainant's ownership of copyright." The shutdown of the world's largest online file sharing website has caused plenty of its users to look for alternatives. This is the reason why similar sites like The Pirate Bay, RARBG, and 1337X now receives a huge increase in their traffic as many of the KAT users moved to them.
There are still those who are hoping that KAT will still stay around, and indeed, several clones of KAT surfaced after the shutdown. But it is not what these people hoped for. Reports say that these websites cause a lot of problem to several users as they turned out to be scams.
It was noted that the websites would ask for credit card information before giving access. KAT had never asked for such a piece of information. Thus, online users must be notified or made aware of these fake websites that are disguised as similar platforms.
