Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Helped FBI Identify Alleged Owner of World's Largest Torrent Site
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Better question, how did they get the fact that the same IP performed the iTunes transaction? If they grabbed logs from his provider then he's a bit dense for not going with a VPN while doing this sort of thing. If they obtained it otherwise that sounds like an agency having access to bulk data and collection and use of bulk metadata for this type of investigation would be a much larger story.
Actually, we have an answer here;
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-21/how-the-us-government-brought-down-kickass-torrents/7649862
He had been keeping an eye on KAT for years and at some point managed to identify two IP addresses of servers in Chicago.
The Chicago hosting company provided evidence that the servers had previously been tied to a known KAT domain name (kat.ph), and the IP addresses had been held by the person owning the servers for years.
In January 2016, investigators went in and took a forensic copy of the server for analysis, which revealed domain names again pointing to known KAT addresses.
The servers also contained files and access logs, and had user accounts called "Nike" — a username that Mr Vaulin had previously been known to use when instant messaging.
The US Feds connect the dots
With records from some of the world's largest tech firms like Apple, Facebook and Google, it does not appear to have been particularly difficult to connect the dots.
At a point in the investigation, Mr Der-Yeghiayan worked out the Apple-run email address tirm@me.com belonged to Artem Vaulin.
You say this as if copying music started with the internet. It didn't.
And it wouldn't stop even if regular citizens started getting arrested for downloading an album or movie.
Looks like the end of the torrent craze, its not mid-2000's any more. Torrent websites and content have been gone down a lot compared to previous years.
Here are few questions:
1-Why don't they sue hosting companies ? They hosted illegal sites, then no one can put up a torrent site.
2-Why would any one build a new website for torrents when the last dominant torrent site owner was put in jail?
3-If the users are the one that share the illegal content, then why are the users are not taken to court? Those IP addresses are all open to the public. You can't sue them all, but suing a few will surely scare the others from using this service.
Hellhammer said:
Here are few questions:
1-Why don't they sue hosting companies ? They hosted illegal sites, then no one can put up a torrent site.
2-Why would any one build a new website for torrents when the last dominant torrent site owner was put in jail?
3-If the users are the one that share the illegal content, then why are the users are not taken to court? Those IP addresses are all open to the public. You can't sue them all, but suing a few will surely scare the others from using this service.
Yeah, good thing stealing was made illegal and people were arrested and put in jail for it, and stealing all but ceased to exist.
Remember the bad old days when people stole? Sure don't want to go back to that gaiz amirite?
Those two things aren't mutually exclusive.
And you may want to consider that the fact that Apple has sold hundreds of millions of iPhones that are in the hands of their customers who expects privacy gives them a responsibility to those customers that they seem to take very seriously.
But if you want to go through life being cynical toward people and organizations that haven't given you any reason to do so go right ahead.
Nothing cynical about it - just Apple being hypocritical about privacy - when it comes to the iPhone, Cowboy Cook digs in his spurs and says he'll take it to the highest court in the land and even past, if need be - everything else ... pfffft.
Thank you, that was much more informative. Seems like whenever these copyright infringers get taken down it's due to some sort of lack of segmentation. You'd think people would go into an illegal and risky venture with a plan of some sort and generate all new accounts specifically for the illegal operation and totally isolate those elements from anything else in their life and anything identifiable. This was an operation with revenue in the tens of millions and carelessness led to their discovery. Lessen one, don't violate the law; lessen two, if you do you better take great care to cover your tracks.
And why is homeland defense involved in these matters? FBI I get, IRS I can see the connection, DHS?
A note to all the people negatively commenting about Pirating yet were funny recording with VHS, taking out movies books etc. from libraries for free and putting in those tape recorders to record their favorite songs off the radio back in the days.
People pay for these services all the time but they're getting tired of the ridiculous and nefarious burdens the studios put on people to enjoy it at free will. Last thing people wanna do is scour the dirty torrent world and risk their PCs but that's the desperation level now!
People pay for these services all the time but they're getting tired of the ridiculous and nefarious burdens the studios put on people to enjoy it at free will. Last thing people wanna do is scour the dirty torrent world and risk their PCs but that's the desperation level now!
It didn't? Isn't privacy for everyone? If not for a big torrent host then how come we look the other way when terrorists use it, where numerous deaths are apparently okay?
lol at their automated responses
Greetings,
Your request has been reviewed, but cannot be processed due to one (or more) of the following reasons:
1) The Claim wasn't written in English language;
2) You provided no evidence showing that you are the copyright holder or that you are acting on behalf of the copyright holder;
3) You provided no evidence showing that the content is legally copyrighted;
4) There were more then 30 torrents mentioned in the Claim email;
5) Your content is hosted on a different website.
Please, make sure to fulfill all the conditions mentioned above before sending a claim. You can find more detailed information regarding the DMCA email layout via the following article - https://kat.cr/dmca/
Respectfully, KAT team
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2996082/Artem-Vaulin-Complaint.pdf
Greetings,
Your request has been reviewed, but cannot be processed due to one (or more) of the following reasons:
1) The Claim wasn't written in English language;
2) You provided no evidence showing that you are the copyright holder or that you are acting on behalf of the copyright holder;
3) You provided no evidence showing that the content is legally copyrighted;
4) There were more then 30 torrents mentioned in the Claim email;
5) Your content is hosted on a different website.
Please, make sure to fulfill all the conditions mentioned above before sending a claim. You can find more detailed information regarding the DMCA email layout via the following article - https://kat.cr/dmca/
Respectfully, KAT team
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2996082/Artem-Vaulin-Complaint.pdf
I like to think most people buy when possible. Especially when CD quality is far better than FM radio (before or after recorded onto 22.5kHz cassette, hehe.) Even 256kbps AAC is virtually indistinguishable to uncompressed 44khz, kudos to Apple for using a far better codec than MP3!! And when DVD and Blu-ray are better than their streaming counterparts, especially when blu-ray is sharper with better color acuity than 4k streaming (ouch), which is why 4k blu-ray players are starting to come out (streaming HD is more a misnomer marketing gimmick than technical fact, but good enough for many technophiles as opposed to the few titles one would want for a permanent collection anyway).
Oh, libraries don't get them for free. Our tax dollars do. So everyone has paid to share (meaning it's a true "sharing economy", not the modern day alteration of the term which is far more in common with renting.)
No argument from me regarding torrents where the nastiest malware truly comes from. It's a known fact those places are loaded with the worst of the worst.
It's slightly distressing to see how many tech-oriented people don't understand the finer details here. Or maybe they're not tech-oriented and just like Apple news page conversation for some reason.
I won't repeat what webbuzz and others have already tried to explain. Some either wants to be balanced or wants to keep believing what they prefer to believe. I can't help them with their critical thinking.
I will make these two points:
1. This is like the drug war in the way the target of the warfare is wrong. The target should be the cause, not the symptom. Why do so many people illegitimately acquire so much IP? The phrase "what the market will bear" can help answer that. This level of piracy is a pressure valve, venting atmosphere from a market that cannot bear the costs demanded for the products marketed. You can either follow on by yourself from here, or you don't want to, so I'll stop here.
2. The fact that it takes millions of dollars in profit from an illegal activity to get such commitment of law enforcement involved suggests to me that there's a problem with money, or rather the application of justice when money is involved. Money makes a crime take precedence over other crimes. Especially when the money is going to an individual.
Money gets you whatever other resources you need or want. Money may not buy happiness, but it sure as hell makes happiness a LOT easier to attain. The battles in economic warfare usually aren't over individual resources. They're over money and the acquisition of money. If you follow the (arguably screwed-up) rules of engagement, you can hoard what you want. So long as you don't literally break the language of the law (regardless of the spirit of the law), you're fine.
There are so many complexities that allow already wealthy entities to use the letter of the law to defeat the spirit of the law. You just need to be able to pay the right people to identify the appropriate language in the poorly considered or outdated laws that will allow you to create the necessary parameters to do what you want (and have the resources to create the scenario to execute that interpretation).
If you're poor, what options do you have to change that situation? Getting a job is not always the answer to even a need for a living wage (increasingly so).
This torrent guy started with something, not nothing. He had a computer and Internet access, and he had money to pay for services. He turned "something" into "more", and he didn't quit while he was ahead (that's the same greed found in white collar crime among the wealthy and it usually is what gets these people caught).
But who did he actually harm? Is there a victim of his crime? We have people defending and praising pirates. Why is that? Are these simply imbalanced people, the same who support and promote (and vote for) racism and sexism? Or are they generally sensible people who are otherwise law-abiding citizens?
The copyright holders are very quick to claim victim status in cases like this but it's a disingenuous claim and is far more nuanced than that, as already suggested by another poster here. The executives who cite job losses in the recording industry aren't taking pay cuts to keep their people employed and aren't suffering themselves, so their claims are disingenuous, especially when their pricing and restrictive copyright management policies punish and demonize their own customers. Self-inflicted injuries there.
I don't want to continue to digress on that so... Moving on: What about the victims of corporate malfeasance that damages or destroys jobs and entire economies?
There's a problem of disproportionate response here when it's an individual vs a corporation.
White collar crime tends to get punished far less than any other, especially if it's a corporation (rather than an individual inside the corporation) that is found to have broken a law. What corporation has even been indicted for a crime in the USA?
If corporations are now persons (corporate personhood, "Citizens United"), why aren't these "persons" put in prison and their assets seized and put back into the society they harmed? The money being taken by the torrent guy came from advertisers, willingly paying money to market their goods at a site with illegal activities. Do these advertisers not get brought up on charges as accessories?
Corporate personhood is not compatible with the rest of the system. Corporations want to use personhood to manipulate government, but choose to forget about personhood when accountability and the justice system are called in. Either the personhood has to end or the "person" has to face the same level of consequence for law violations.
When a corporation violates the law, damaging or destroying entire economies, or the health of millions (damage to ecosystems, release of toxins, destroying groundwater, etc), the "corporate person" should receive appropriate punishment to the crime and the injury to the victims (most often, the victims are the entire society). Who has gone to jail in the USA over these kinds of acts? No one. Much of it isn't even considered crime. You can be brought up on charges of attempted murder for poisoning someone through negligence, but a corporation or industry cannot be held accountable for poisoning entire communities via negligence.
Certainly these corporate persons (more likely the executives who ordered the illegal acts) should receive harsher punishments than this torrent guy when he didn't seriously damage an economy in the process of acquiring his millions. He accepted wealth from the privileged (advertisers, not the donators). The system allows him to make money in this way. It encourages this process. Are we to believe the advertisers are all innocent and ignorant of his website's function?
We know that this guy is likely to face imprisonment. He will be prevented from continuing to do what he did. With corporate crime, they just move to another position and keep harming society.
This is imbalanced.
I won't repeat what webbuzz and others have already tried to explain. Some either wants to be balanced or wants to keep believing what they prefer to believe. I can't help them with their critical thinking.
I will make these two points:
1. This is like the drug war in the way the target of the warfare is wrong. The target should be the cause, not the symptom. Why do so many people illegitimately acquire so much IP? The phrase "what the market will bear" can help answer that. This level of piracy is a pressure valve, venting atmosphere from a market that cannot bear the costs demanded for the products marketed. You can either follow on by yourself from here, or you don't want to, so I'll stop here.
2. The fact that it takes millions of dollars in profit from an illegal activity to get such commitment of law enforcement involved suggests to me that there's a problem with money, or rather the application of justice when money is involved. Money makes a crime take precedence over other crimes. Especially when the money is going to an individual.
Money gets you whatever other resources you need or want. Money may not buy happiness, but it sure as hell makes happiness a LOT easier to attain. The battles in economic warfare usually aren't over individual resources. They're over money and the acquisition of money. If you follow the (arguably screwed-up) rules of engagement, you can hoard what you want. So long as you don't literally break the language of the law (regardless of the spirit of the law), you're fine.
There are so many complexities that allow already wealthy entities to use the letter of the law to defeat the spirit of the law. You just need to be able to pay the right people to identify the appropriate language in the poorly considered or outdated laws that will allow you to create the necessary parameters to do what you want (and have the resources to create the scenario to execute that interpretation).
If you're poor, what options do you have to change that situation? Getting a job is not always the answer to even a need for a living wage (increasingly so).
This torrent guy started with something, not nothing. He had a computer and Internet access, and he had money to pay for services. He turned "something" into "more", and he didn't quit while he was ahead (that's the same greed found in white collar crime among the wealthy and it usually is what gets these people caught).
But who did he actually harm? Is there a victim of his crime? We have people defending and praising pirates. Why is that? Are these simply imbalanced people, the same who support and promote (and vote for) racism and sexism? Or are they generally sensible people who are otherwise law-abiding citizens?
The copyright holders are very quick to claim victim status in cases like this but it's a disingenuous claim and is far more nuanced than that, as already suggested by another poster here. The executives who cite job losses in the recording industry aren't taking pay cuts to keep their people employed and aren't suffering themselves, so their claims are disingenuous, especially when their pricing and restrictive copyright management policies punish and demonize their own customers. Self-inflicted injuries there.
I don't want to continue to digress on that so... Moving on: What about the victims of corporate malfeasance that damages or destroys jobs and entire economies?
There's a problem of disproportionate response here when it's an individual vs a corporation.
White collar crime tends to get punished far less than any other, especially if it's a corporation (rather than an individual inside the corporation) that is found to have broken a law. What corporation has even been indicted for a crime in the USA?
If corporations are now persons (corporate personhood, "Citizens United"), why aren't these "persons" put in prison and their assets seized and put back into the society they harmed? The money being taken by the torrent guy came from advertisers, willingly paying money to market their goods at a site with illegal activities. Do these advertisers not get brought up on charges as accessories?
Corporate personhood is not compatible with the rest of the system. Corporations want to use personhood to manipulate government, but choose to forget about personhood when accountability and the justice system are called in. Either the personhood has to end or the "person" has to face the same level of consequence for law violations.
When a corporation violates the law, damaging or destroying entire economies, or the health of millions (damage to ecosystems, release of toxins, destroying groundwater, etc), the "corporate person" should receive appropriate punishment to the crime and the injury to the victims (most often, the victims are the entire society). Who has gone to jail in the USA over these kinds of acts? No one. Much of it isn't even considered crime. You can be brought up on charges of attempted murder for poisoning someone through negligence, but a corporation or industry cannot be held accountable for poisoning entire communities via negligence.
Certainly these corporate persons (more likely the executives who ordered the illegal acts) should receive harsher punishments than this torrent guy when he didn't seriously damage an economy in the process of acquiring his millions. He accepted wealth from the privileged (advertisers, not the donators). The system allows him to make money in this way. It encourages this process. Are we to believe the advertisers are all innocent and ignorant of his website's function?
We know that this guy is likely to face imprisonment. He will be prevented from continuing to do what he did. With corporate crime, they just move to another position and keep harming society.
This is imbalanced.
So you are saying that this guy is just facilitating and the the real pirates are perhaps many million strong throughout the world. And since most of the content is English it is a fair assumption that the pirating is concentrated in the richest largest western country. The USA.
I have seen the pirates and they are us!
Last edited by a moderator:
Go suck a d*ck apple, I'm starting to really freaking hate you. They don't even make good products anymore
Yes, I'm sure this is the only thing that the FBI has been doing all year.