But, again, I’m not entirely clear how that’s relevant to the claim of criminal copyright infringement. The complaint spends lots of time on the fact that KAT makes a fair bit of money from advertising revenue. The best they can do is note that they found a few servers that were apparently in Chicago. So I’m not entirely clear why US copyright laws apply here. At all.įurthermore, the complaint goes on about how KAT, as it calls Kickass Torrents, rejected DMCA takedown notices for a variety of reasons, but leaves out the fact that KAT is not an American company and is not under the jurisdiction of US laws.
Because that’s not how criminal copyright law works. So, you see, once again, the government is creating a form of secondary liability for copyright infringement that does not exist in the law. So instead, the government tosses in this “ otherwise aid or assist those who distribute and reproduce infringingĬopies of copyrighted motion picture or television content.” But, again, note the games played in the complaint: “index, link, frame, transmit, retransmit, provide access to” don’t directly infringe on the stated copyright exclusive rights (yes, there are some cases where some of the above may infringe on some of the exclusive rights, but it’s not particularly cut and dry). The copyright act is pretty specifically limited to a few rights, including reproduction and distribution. Here’s the thing: most of those things listed above are not rights granted by the copyright act. Granted permission to KAT to index, link, frame, transmit, retransmit, provideĪccess to, or otherwise aid or assist those who distribute and reproduce infringingĬopies of copyrighted motion picture or television content of MPAA members. The representatives also specified that the MPAA has not
Monitors KAT and that a significant portion of the movies available on KAT are The representatives stated that the MPAA closely The representatives provided me with information the MPAA had developed about Of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) regarding this investigation.
Yes, link.Īs part of the investigation, I have communicated with representatives The complaint barely even shows how Vaulin could be liable for the infringement conducted via Kickass Torrents.īut, of course, that doesn’t matter because the guy at Homeland Security Investigations (formerly: ICE: Immigrations & Customs Enforcement) just spoke to the MPAA and the MPAA said that Kickass Torrents had no permission to link to their content.
But that’s not actually how criminal copyright infringement works. Even though Kickass Torrents does not host the actual infringing files at all, the complaint argues that Vaulin is still legally responsible for others doing so.
#Massive torrent kickass full
As with the original Kim Dotcom/Megaupload indictment, the full criminal complaint against Vaulin is worth reading.Īs with the case against Dotcom/Megaupload, the DOJ seems to ignore the fact that there is no such thing as secondary liability in criminal infringement. The site has also been seized and the owner, Artem Vaulin, has been arrested in Poland. So just as the US government itself is accused of being engaged in massive copyright infringement itself, the Justice Department proudly announces that it has charged the owner of Kickass Torrents with criminal copyright infringement claims. Thu, Jul 21st 2016 08:28am - Mike Masnick
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