Recent Posts
- ICANN publishes its Woke Manifesto. Here’s my hot take
- Alibaba, Name.com among new RDRS opt-ins
- The Swiss can register .swiss domains from next week
- .ai up to 425,000 domains
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- ICANN content policing power grab may be dead
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- Internet could get one-letter gTLDs (but there’s a catch)
- .ai registry fights deadbeats with tweaked auction rules
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- ICANN 79: anonymous trolls and undercover lawyers
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- Epik gets acquired again! The plot thickens…
- Airline gTLD crashes and burns
- First chunks of new gTLD Applicant Guidebook drop
- Epik to reveal its owners soon
- Another crypto firm to apply for a new gTLD
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- ICANN picks its first ever Supreme Court
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- ICANN approves domain takedown rules
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- First bits of new gTLD Applicant Guidebook expected next week
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- ICANN threatens to regulate your speech [RANT]
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- ICANN predicts flattish 2025 for domain industry
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- Google sells five-figure AI domain and six-figure .ing hack
- .blackfriday is still a bit rubbish
- Internet Naming Co acquires five more gTLDs
Domain-hopping torrent site seized, founder arrested
Kevin Murphy,
July 22, 2016, 10:07:49 (UTC),
Domain Policy
A joint US-Polish law enforcement operation has led to the arrest of the alleged owner of the piracy-focused BitTorrent links site KickAssTorrents.
The US Department of Justice announced yesterday that Ukrainian national Artem Vaulin has been arrested in Poland and that it will seek to extradite him to Chicago to face criminal copyright infringement charges.
The site, which has been banned at the ISP level in countries including the UK, provides links to download and share copyrighted works such as movies and music from other BitTorrent users.
But it’s perhaps best known in the domain name industry for regularly jumping from one TLD to another as its domains are terminated by local authorities.
According to the DoJ, it has been seen on kickasstorrents.com, kat.ph (Philippines), kickass.to (Tonga), kickass.so (Somalia) and kat.cr (Costa Rica).
The department said it has seized seven domain names as part of its operation.
According to my records, there are 20 examples of kickasstorrents.example domains in the Alexa one million, all in new gTLDs (though I’ve no idea whether they’re part of the same operation).
The DoJ reckons KAT makes annual revenue of between $12.5 million to $22.3 million from advertising accompanying its links.
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