14 DAY TRIAL // KickassTorrents finally went to court this week against the US Department of Justice, months after the site went dark.
According to TorrentFreak, the legal team behind Artem Vaulin, the alleged KickassTorrents owner, went head to head with the US Department of Justice, asking the court to simply drop the case since there was no proof of actual criminal copyright infringement.
Not surprisingly, the US prosecutor did not agree and described the site as a haven for piracy that made millions every year.
Lawyer Ira Rothken, defending Vaulin, says there’s a major flaw in the case since torrent files themselves are not copyrighted content. Furthermore, the secondary copyright infringement claims don’t even exist under criminal law.
Defense seeks dismissal
“We believe that the indictment against Artem Vaulin in the KAT torrent files case is defective and should be dismissed. Torrent files are not content files. The reproduction and distribution of torrent files are not a crime,” Rothken told TorrentFreak.
Basically, if any KickassTorrent visitor chooses to download a torrent file, the infringement happens after they leave the site behind and, therefore, Vaulin can’t be held accountable. Furthermore, the defense said KAT is pretty much like a search engine, and you wouldn’t sue Google for something its users do.
On the other hand, the prosecutor argues that Google is not a service dedicated to uploading and distributing copyrighted works. Furthermore, they estimate that the site’s advertising revenue was somewhere between $12.5 million and $22.3 million.
It remains to be seen what the judge will rule and whom it will side with.
Vaulin is currently in custody over in Poland where he was denied bail. He was transferred to the hospital a few weeks back, facing some serious health problems, but he remains guarded. KickassTorrents went dark last July following Vaulin’s arrest.
The site had lots of problems over the past few years with multiple attempts to have it taken down, which is why it changed domain several times.