The Story
The owner of Kickass torrents was caught today for logging into his Facebook account. With the help of Apple and Facebook, the U.S. government was able to catch Artem Vaulin by providing matching IP addresses. The same IP address used to purchase Pokemon Go from the App Store, was used to log into the Kickass Torrents’ main Facebook page. Matching A to B, the Federales (that ironically failed to capture Heisenberg from Breaking Bad) finally caught this guy. Read the full story at Security Week.
Now they plan on extraditing the Ukranian to the US and have him tried for piracy violations and money laundering. The price tag they will try him for is upwards of $1 billion.
Now he has problems. But so does about 50 million monthly users that rely on Kickass Torrents to download their taboo goodies. Looks like the US economy is about to go through a GDP boom! All of those new HBO subscriptions and UFC fight pass purchases will make sure the 1% keep their leather shoes polished.
Makes You Wonder
If Vaulin is eventually charged with these crimes, will he be forced to fork over private information of his users? That means that anyone who has used KAT to download illegal content would be revealed to the authorities. Would they come after those people? Would they attack that 13-year-old kid who just wanted to download Photoshop to make his father’s birthday montage? Would they arrest the girl who couldn’t stop watching Game of Thrones?
Just another conspiracy theory, but seriously I will continue to watch this event unfold.
