Kickass Torrents (KAT) owner Artem Vaulin asked the U.S. government, through his legal defense team, to drop the criminal case against him last month. Now, the government has responded and said no, it will never happen.
According to the defense, the actual torrent files are not copyrighted content and that Vaulin has never touched the copyrighted materials himself. The website that he owns only indexes the torrent files and only acts similar to a search engine, Torrent Freak reports.
However, United States Attorney Zachary Fardon pointed out that it is true that KAT is indexing torrent files, but, it is doing so with copyrighted content that includes movies and music. KAT was compared to a flea market for pirated content.
The U.S. Attorney said, "These indexed files enabled users to obtain copyrighted content from other users, including from the defendant's own servers. KAT therefore functioned like a (lucrative) flea market for infringing movies, television shows, video games, music, and computer software."
Attorney Fardon also said that KAT is like an alleged drug dealer, who can be considered as a criminal even if they did not have direct contact with it. He added, "For the defendant to claim immunity from prosecution because he earned money by directing users to download infringing content from other users is much like a drug broker claiming immunity because he never touched the drugs,"
The bottom line of the argument is that if the defendant offered assistance to someone to commit a crime, that person is also held liable for the same crime.
Meanwhile, in other news, more than 150 streaming sites in Italy have been blocked by the Italian government from streaming movies and sports events. Special units coming from the Guardia di Finanza (GdF), a department that falls under Italy's Ministry of Economy and Finance, was able to convince a judge in Rome to issue a mass injunction for the multiple websites. The latest move by the government is the biggest since 2008.
Currently, torrent fans are still flocking towards The Pirate Bay (TBP) for their torrent needs, and a new emerging site called 1137x has captured the attention of the community, and it is becoming a favorite.
