The popular torrent website, KickassTorrents, is still down even as Artem Vaulin's legal defense asks the United States Department of Justice to drop charges against their client and release him from prison. Vaulin's lawyers argue that the alleged owner is not criminally responsible for pirated files that KickassTorrents users may have downloaded.
The Polish law enforcement officers arrested Vaulin last month, and he has been held in a local prison ever since, according to Torrent Freak. The officers acted on a criminal complaint from the U.S. Government. Based on the accusations, the 30-year-old Ukrainian is charged with money laundering and copyright infringement.
The defense team lead by Iran Rothken argues that these charges are baseless. The team did not address whether their client is indeed the owner of KAT, but they said that the allegations do not hold up.
In a letter addressed to the Department of Justice, the defense team has requested the authorities to dismiss criminal charges against Vaulin and release him from prison as soon as possible. According to them, criminal secondary or indirect copyright infringement does not hold under the US law. This pegs the question as to whether KAT should be brought back online.
The lawyers established that the KickassTorrents site itself never hosted any infringement material. The website only kept files, and possibly copyright infringements would take effect the moment users had left the site.
In a statement quoted by the same publication, the defense team argued, "By the time any possible primary infringement by a former KAT visitor could ever occur the visit to the site is long over. Defendants cannot be held criminally responsible for what users do after they leave the KAT search engine behind. The Copyright Act does not criminalize secondary copyright infringement."
According to the defense team, the affidavit contains other "incorrect, misleading, and irrelevant allegations" about BitTorrent technology and the way KAT operated. Furthermore, it has no specific examples linking the operator to infringing downloads. The only relevant infringement quoted is one committed by an agent from Homeland Security Investigations.
As a result, the defense argues that the absence of any particular accusations is not an oversight. Rather, it is a side effect of how far Vaulin is removed from possible copyright infringing acts.
In case the premise from the defense holds substance, fans should expect that KickassTorrents be brought back online. Here is footage for more information on Vaulin's case: