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So elegant wie das Vorbild ist der Octobot noch nicht. Aber der Soft Robot hat einen Vorteil gegenüber seinen Vorgängern: Er kommt ohne externen Antrieb aus. (Roboter, Technologie)

Last month, Polish law enforcement officers arrested Artem Vaulin, the alleged owner of KickassTorrents, who’s been held in a local prison since.

Polish authorities acted on a criminal complaint from the U.S. Government which contained several damning allegations.

This week, the Department of Justice (DoJ) followed up the complaint with a full grand jury indictment, which presents several new allegations.

In addition to Vaulin, it charges two other defendants, Ievgen Kutsenko and Oleksandr Radostin. The three men, all from Ukraine, are charged with several counts of copyright infringement and money laundering.

“Kickass Torrents, or ‘KAT,’ was a commercial website that facilitated and promoted the reproduction and distribution of copyrighted content over the Internet without authorization of the copyright owners,” the DoJ writes.

KAT’s seizure banner

According to the indictment, the ‘KAT conspiracy’ involved a variety of piracy-related websites. It mentions that the torrent storage service Torcache.net, which went offline together with KAT, was operated by the same people.

In addition, the defendants were involved in a variety of direct download sites where users could download or stream copyright-infringing content, sometimes in exchange for payments.

These sites include the popular streaming portal Solarmovie, which disappeared last month, as well as the defunct torrent leeching service Leechmonster.

“Leechmonster.com, rolly.com, solarmovie.com, solarmovie.ph, iwatchfilm.com, movie2b.com, hippomovies.com, bino.tv, and moviepro.net were commercial websites that enabled registered users to download or stream copyrighted movies and other media directly from the website,” the indictment reads.

According to the U.S. Government, the three men used the sites to generate millions of dollars in revenue.

“…defendants […] and others designed, developed, and operated KAT, torcache.net, and the direct download websites in order to encourage, induce, facilitate, engage in, and generate millions of dollars from the unlawful reproduction and distribution of copyright-protected media,” the indictment states.

The authorities describe KickassTorrents as a site that was developed purposefully to facilitate copyright infringements. Among other things, this included the sorting of torrents by genre, so they would be easier to find.

In addition, the defendants are also accused of developing a BitTorrent client to facilitate piracy, and of operating the subtitle repository Subtitlesource.com.

On the money laundering side, the indictment includes various examples of advertising payments that were made to bank accounts that were operated by the defendants. This includes a payment from an undercover IRS investigator, who posed as an advertiser.

The Department of Justice has yet to comment on the indictment and it’s currently unknown where the two additional defendants reside and if they have been arrested. The court record shows that two warrants were submitted yesterday, but these remain sealed for now.

Meanwhile, Artem Vaulin is still being held in a Polish prison, awaiting his extradition process.

His lawyer previously asked the Department of Justice to release his client. The defense argued that Vaulin can’t be held responsible for the potentially infringing actions of the KAT’s users, since criminal secondary or indirect copyright infringement does not exist under U.S. law.

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A copy of the full indictment obtained by TorrentFreak is available here.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Beim Verbinden eines Kindle E-Book-Readers per USB-Kabel kann es zu einem Totalabsturz von Windows 10 kommen. Ursache ist vermutlich das Anniversary Update. Ein aktueller Patch korrigiert den Fehler wohl nicht. (Windows 10, Microsoft)

Ab September will HP Notebooks der Elitebook-Serie mit einem Privatsphäre-Filter versehen. Die integrierte Displayschicht verhindert auf Knopfdruck die Sichtbarkeit für neugierige Nachbarn. (Business-Notebooks, Mobil)

Ein neuer Angriff auf TLS- und VPN-Verbindungen betrifft alte Verschlüsselungsalgorithmen wie Triple-DES und Blowfish, die Daten in 64-Bit-Blöcken verschlüsseln. Der Angriff erfordert das Belauschen vieler Gigabytes an Daten und dürfte damit nur selten praktikabel sein. (SSL, Browser)

Ab der Ifa 2016 soll die Deutsche Telekom einem Bericht zufolge Apple Music als Streamingoption für Mobilfunkverträge anbieten. Bisher wird nur Spotify auf diese Weise vermarktet. Möglicherweise sind weitere Mobilfunkanbieter dabei. (Apple Music, Cloud Computing)

Sowohl für das Nexus 5 als auch das Nexus 7 der zweiten Generation gibt es erste Portierungen von Android 7.0 alias Nougat. Noch funktioniert nicht alles, aber es dürfte nicht lange dauern, bis Android 7.0 auf den von Google nicht unterstützten Geräten einwandfrei läuft. (Android 7.0, Google)

Canon bringt mit der EOS 5D Mark IV das nächste Modell seiner Kleinbild-DSLR auf den Markt. Der Sensor erreicht eine Auflösung von 34 Megapixeln und kann auch zum Filmen von 4K-Videos eingesetzt werden. Die Kamera wird allerdings teuer. (Canon, DSLR)

Reparaturdienste berichten von flackernden Displays beim iPhone 6 und iPhone 6 Plus sowie Ausfällen des Touchscreens. Vermutet werden Konstruktionsfehler, die zur Beschädigung der Elektronik führen. Es könnte sich um ein Bentgate 2.0 handeln. (Bentgate, Display)

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