KickassTorrent(KAT) Seized! Is This The End Of KickassTorrents??

The KickassTorrents (KAT), commonly known file-sharing site is in verge of extinction as U.S authorities, arrested the alleged owner and seized most of the domians. He was also charged with several criminal charges.

KickassTorrents, site which was founded in 2008, provides a directory for torrent files and magnet links to facilitate peer-to-peer file sharing using the BitTorrent protocol. As of November 2014, KAT became the most visited BitTorrent directory in the world, overtaking The Pirate Bay, according to the site's Alexa ranking. 



AS ON WIKIPEDIA
On July 20th, 2016, the domain was seized by the United States government and was subsequently shut down.

The 30 year old Artem Vaulin, from Ukraine,who was on a run, was arrested today in Poland from where the United States has requested his extradition and charged him with conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement and conspiracy to commit money laundering and criminal copyright infringement.

The US Department of Justice has released a press release which reveals that the authorities have charged the owner of Kickass Torrents with criminal copyright infringement and have seized domain names associated with the website.

“Vaulin is charged with running today’s most visited illegal file-sharing website, responsible for unlawfully distributing well over $1 billion of copyrighted materials,” said Assistant Attorney General Caldwell.  “In an effort to evade law enforcement, Vaulin allegedly relied on servers located in countries around the world and moved his domains due to repeated seizures and civil lawsuits.  His arrest in Poland, however, demonstrates again that cybercriminals can run, but they cannot hide from justice.”

“Copyright infringement exacts a large toll, a very human one, on the artists and businesses whose livelihood hinges on their creative inventions,” said U.S. Attorney Fardon.  “Vaulin allegedly used the Internet to cause enormous harm to those artists.  Our Cybercrimes Unit at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago will continue to work with our law enforcement partners around the globe to identify, investigate and prosecute those who attempt to illegally profit from the innovation of others.”

“Artem Vaulin was allegedly running a worldwide digital piracy website that stole more than $1 billion in profits from the U.S. entertainment industry,” said Executive Associate Director Edge.  “Protecting legitimate commerce is one of HSI’s highest priorities.  With the cooperation of our law enforcement partners, we will continue to aggressively bring to justice those who enrich themselves by stealing the creative work of U.S. artists.”

“Investigating cyber-enabled schemes is a top priority for CI,” said Chief Weber.  “Websites such as the one seized today brazenly facilitate all kinds of illegal commerce.  Criminal Investigation is committed to thoroughly investigating financial crimes, regardless of the medium.  We will continue to work with our law enforcement partners to unravel this and other complex financial transactions and money laundering schemes where individuals attempt to conceal the true source of their income and use the Internet to mask their true identity.”

According to the lawsuit, federal authorities have seized seven domains related to KAT:

• kickasstorrents.com
• kastatic.com
• thekat.tv
• kat.cr
• kickass.cr
• kickass.to
• kat.ph

According to Kickass Torrents’ status website, the illegal streaming service still has other domains that aren’t included in the complaint. These domains include kickassto.co, kickass.ag, kickass.cs, katproxy.is, thekat.se, katproxy.cc, lovekat.org, and an onion site. At this time, it’s unclear why these domains also weren’t seized or if they will be seized too.

The Kickass Torrent website still reports that everything is working fine with its primary domain: