Owner of KickAss Torrents arrested by Polish police

Artem Vaulin, the alleged Ukrainian owner of file-sharing website KickAssTorrents (KAT), has been arrested by Polish police on US charges of criminal copyright infringement and conspiracy to commit money laundering, bnonews webportal informed. The US will seek to extradite Vaulin to the United States to stand trial, a press release informed. "Vaulin is charged with running today’s most visited illegal file-sharing website, responsible for unlawfully distributing well over $1 billion of copyrighted materials," said Leslie Caldwell of the US Justice Department. "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." US prosecutors allege that KAT, which operates in 28 languages, has a net worth estimated to be more than $54 million with an estimated annual advertising revenue in the range of $12.5 million to $22.3 million. The website has been forced to change its domain name several times and is blocked in several countries. If convicted, criminal copyright infringement and conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement carry a maximum sentence of 5 years imprisonment. The conspiracy to commit money laundering charge is punishable by up to 20 years.