Pirate site targeted by Aus music industry seized by US Govt

As Australia’s music industry waits to have its case against pirate site Kickass Torrents heard, the US has seized its domain names and charged its alleged operator, Artem Vauli.

According to the criminal complaint against 30-year-old Ukrainian-born Vauli, the US Department of Justice arrested him Wednesday in Poland by simply following his IP address.

The IP address was actually handed over by Apple and Facebook after authorities presented the tech giants with a warrant. As pointed out by Gizmodo this morning, Vauli was operating a Kickass Torrents Facebook fan page using an @me.com email address – the email type users of Apple’s iTunes are given when they set up an account.

Because Vauli used his tirm@me.com email to make a somewhat ironic purchase on iTunes, US officials were able to access is IP address.

Vaulin has been charged with conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement, to commit money laundering and criminal copyright infringement. US officials want him extradited to face the charges.

“Vaulin is charged with running today’s most visited illegal file-sharing website, responsible for unlawfully distributing well over $1 billion ($AU1.3 billion) of copyrighted materials,” Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell said in a statement. 

“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.”

Authorities have said KickAss Torrents has a net worth of more than $US54 million ($AU72 million).

Vaulin’s arrest has already incited pirates to publish a mirror website of KickAss Torrents. Torrent link site isoHunt has created a site, which TMN won’t be naming, to host KickAss Torrent files to illegally download. The site’s homepage also points to a Change.org petition chasing support for Vaulin. The petition has 962 signatures at time of publishing.

KickAss Torrents is among eight offshore proxy sites involved in legal proceedings with the local music industry.

The case to block the eight sites in Australia under section 115A of the Copyright Act 1968 was initially filed in mid-April. It’s being lead by Music Rights Australia on behalf of the three major labels, along with the BMG-owned music rights management company Alberts and collecting society APRA AMCOS.

At a directions hearing in May, a timetable was put in place before Justice Katzmann and the matter was set down for a two-day hearing on 25 and 26 October.

A case management hearing was held this morning before Justice Burley, who will be the presiding officer for the two October hearing dates. The music industry parties and ISPs, which include Telstra, Optus, Foxtel and TPG, have agreed to exchange their evidence by September 30. TMN has reached out to Legal Representative Respondent King & Wood Mallesons for comment.

Vanessa Hutley, General Manager of Music Rights Australia, offered the following statement today to TMN regarding the local music case against KickAss Torrents:

"The local music case is proceeding and we look forward to a positive outcome."