The United States has seized the most popular torrent domain, Kickass Torrents, after the alleged owner Artem Vaulin was arrested in Poland. He was charged with both collusion to commit copyright infringement and money laundering. However, the domain was not seized for long as it was found to be up and running in the form of mirror sites. Individuals running these sites also filed a petition to release the owner, claiming their advocacy to the freedom of information.
Vaulin was accused of running the most prevalent, but prohibited file-sharing website in the world. The domain has unlawfully distributed over $1 billion worth of copyrighted materials. Kickass Torrents had servers located across the globe and has been moved to various domains, in line with the owners efforts to evade the law.
However, it is highly unlikely that the people involved in running the domain would allow it to shut down that easily. Kickass Torrents manages to pull about $12-22.3 million in its annual advertising revenues, which is a fairly huge amount to lose. According to The Verge, the domain was moved to different servers and is operating in the form of clones. They have found two copies, one being KAT.am, which is said to be operating behind Cloudfare in order to ensure that the hosting information remains well hidden.
Meanwhile, Torrent Freak reported that the people behind several mirror sites are protesting against the arrest of Vaulin, as they stand for the freedom of the internet. They launched a petition in Change.org and claimed that the owner was an advocate of free information. It was claimed that Vaulin is only accused of copyright infringement charges, but has not been found guilty yet. However, the said petition has been removed.
