KickassTorrents (commonly abbreviated KAT) was a website that provided a directory for torrent files and magnet links to facilitate peer-to-peer file sharing using the BitTorrent protocol. (Photo : YouTube / Underground @News)
Will The Pirate Bay soon compete again with former King of Torrents and chief rival KickassTorrents as lawyers for KAT.cr try to convince a U.S. court that torrenting or free movie streaming is not a crime, therefore alleged site operator Artem Vaulin should be freed? But KAT coming back online or resuming operation is unlikely to happen until February 2017, a new report said.
Vaulin, according to TorrentFreak, was denied bail by a Polish court and will remain in custody until February. The Ukrainian national is accused by the U.S. government of multiple counts of copyright infringement and money laundering. He is awaiting extradition to the United States to face a jury trial.
However, Vaulin's defense counsels are working to have the criminal indictment against the accused KAT owner dismissed. In a latest filing, Vaulin's legal team said that the website KickassTorrents is not a criminal enterprise as painted by U.S. federal authorities.
Vaulin as a suspected criminal will not stand in a U.S. court, the filing said. His lawyers insisted that Vaulin is being accused of facilitating free video streaming and torrenting but both activities are hardly illegal. Under the U.S. law, torrenting is not a crime while streaming, free or paid, is not a felony.
What KAT.cr is no more than the basic function of Google - a search engine for torrent or download links but not host to copyrighted contents, and the two are different things, the defense argument said.
The filling also shot down the U.S. government's position that Vaulin is guilty of aiding and abetting crime through the KickassTorrents operation. "Aiding and abetting was removed from the Copyright Act by Congress in 1976 thereby eliminating the crime," the defense team said.
Additionally, the accusation that Vaulin and his co-accused took part in the operations of streaming services or direct download sites such as rolly.com, solarmovie.com and iwatchfilm.com is not supported by facts. "There are no facts alleged that such works were uploaded, stored, or downloaded from direct download sites," the filing said.
In its plea for the court to dismiss the case, Vaulin's legal team made clear that the indictment is flawed. "The attempt to hold KAT's overseas torrent sites as accessories to unspecified copyright crimes committed in unknown ways in the United States by unknown former KAT users is unprecedented and violates multiple constitutional prohibitions," the defense filing was reported by TorrentFreak as saying.
As the Illinois District Court now has the last say on whether to dismiss the case against Vaulin or pave the way for a jury trial, the alleged KickassTorrents operator will remain in Polish prison until next year, leaving torrent fans to wonder if KAT is coming back online anytime soon or they will continue to rely on the best alternatives available - The Pirate Bay and ExtraTorrent.cc.
