Thirteen Arrested in Germany for Running Illegal Movie Streaming Site

In a coordinated effort, law enforcement authorities from Germany, Spain, France and the Netherlands, took down KINO.TO, one of the largest pirated movie streaming websites in Europe, and arrested thirteen people suspected of being involved in its operation.

KINO.TO was particularly popular in German-speaking countries because most of the content movies and tv shows available on the site were dubbed in German.

According to TorrentFreak, the site had around four million unique visitors per day and was within the top 100-most visited sites in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

The MPAA placed KINO.TO on the list of notorious markets it submitted to the Office of the US Trade Representative last year.

However, the site itself didn't host any of the infringing content. Instead, it included links and embeddings pointing to external servers and other streaming sites.

Nevertheless, the German Federation Against Copyright Theft (GVU) claims the site's operators profited handsomely from the pirated movies by displaying numerous ads on the website.

Police officers executed raids and seized equipment at numerous locations across the four countries. In Germany alone, search warrants were executed at 20 residences and data centers.

Thirteen people were arrested based on suspicion of criminal association for the purpose of committing professional copyright infringement. Police is still looking for a fourteenth individual.

The kino.to domain name was seized and the site now displays a warning in German which roughly translates to: "The website you accessed was closed on the suspicion of forming a criminal association to commit professional copyright infringement. Several KINO.TO operators were arrested. Internet users who pirated or distributed copies of films may be subject to criminal investigation."

The investigation into KINO.TO began in April 2011 following a complaint from GVU. The federation claims the servers where streamed movies were being hosted, were specifically set up by the KINO.TO admins themselves in order to support the website.