14 DAY TRIAL // Artem Vaulin, the Ukrainian national behind the Kickass Torrents (KAT) portal that was recently taken down by US authorities, has decided to retain the services of Ira Rothken, the lawyer handling the long and drawn-out case of Kim Dotcom, the founder and CEO of Megaupload.
Vaulin, 30, of Kharkiv, Ukraine, was arrested ten days ago by authorities in Poland and is now facing an extradition trial, just like Dotcom has been battling one in New Zealand for many years.
Vaulin, Dotcom defense strategies should be similar
The decision to choose Rothken was an easy one, seeing that he has managed to keep Dotcom out of jail for around four years. Additionally, their cases are technically similar, involving a defense against claims of "secondary copyright infringement."
This is a legal term to describe the act of facilitating the crime of copyright infringement by someone's lack of action to deter it. Secondary copyright infringement is not a crime in the United States, and Rothken will probably argue that, theoretically, Vaulin did not break any laws, hence the extradition should not be approved.
He took a similar approach with Dotcom, but unlike Vaulin and KAT, who did not store any copyrighted materials on their servers, Dotcom's Megaupload servers were chock-full of infringing data.
Rothken: KAT is similar to Google, a glorified set of hyperlinks
The cases are, of course, more complicated than these simple explanations, with Vaulin also facing charges of money laundering.
In statements to tech news site Ars, Rothken said, "It [KAT] is a glorified set of hyperlinks, very much like you would get from a search engine like Google. This case of KickassTorrents, we’re not able to find any cases especially criminal case where a hyperlink was considered direct wilful infringement."
The EU is also preparing to rule in favor of this train of thought, that linking to pirated or copyright infringing content is not illegal.
