Busted Pirate Movie Site Primed For Grand 1.5 Million Euro Rebirth

enigmax
October 29, 2011
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Kino.to,
Kinoo.to
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An illicit streaming movie site that was busted during a massive anti-piracy operation earlier this year is set to surprise Hollywood with a grand comeback. Following the huge police operation to shutdown Kino.to, an agreement was reached to put the site into the hands of new owners. The secret deal, worth a cool 1.5 million euros, is in its final stages.

In early June, police across Germany, Spain, France and the Netherlands coordinated to carry out the largest anti-piracy operation of its type to date. The main focus was movie streaming portal Kino.to, which was shut down following more than a dozen arrests.

Kino.to hosted no illicit content itself but indexed material stored on file-hosters and other streaming services. While it carried thousands of links to the latest English language blockbusters, Kino.to was most popular among German visitors due to its vast indexes of local language movies.

Not long after the site disappeared, another site – Kinox.to – appeared claiming to be Kino.to resurrected, but although it did have some striking graphical similarities, it wasn’t necessarily the official “real deal” replacement for the downed site.

What we didn’t know at the time was that an ambitious plan to properly bring back Kino.to was already in the making.

According to a document obtained by TorrentFreak titled “übernahmevertrag” (“acquisition agreement”) and dated nearly 3 months ago, the Kino.to “Internet Project” has been sold to a company called Kinoo GmbH.

The purchase included “…the Kino.to domain and all the programs and databases to the project” plus servers and hardware located at a datacenter in Russia.

The document indicates that the handover took place on 27th July 2011 and the databases were transferred via a USB stick and two CDs.

“The purchase price amounts to € 1.5 million, the money will be transferred in two parts of € 750,000 each into the seller’s account,” the signed acquisition papers conclude.

The new owners of the site have informed TorrentFreak that within a week the Kino.to domain will be operating in tandem with Kinoo.to (note the double ‘o’), the URL of the new site that is already in operation.

Because the police took control of Kino.to’s DNS during the raids, the original domain still currently points to a notice saying the site has been seized, but it won’t stay that way for long. A domain transfer to the new owner is currently underway and should be complete in a matter of days.

The resurrection of Kino.to will probably come as quite a surprise to the German Federation Against Copyright Theft (GVU) and MPAA who previously listed Kino.to as a leading “notorious pirate market” in their submission to the U.S. Government.

However, according to Alexander Baumgärtner from Kinoo GmbH iG, the German-based company that acquired Kino.to, the site’s rebirth will also signal a new approach to its operations.

“Our goal is to provide a serious and legitimate streaming project,” Baumgärtner told TorrentFreak, adding that a limited company in the Cologne area has been established and new offices acquired. Offshore companies, it seems, are off the agenda.

“We understand that Kino.to has a very questionable reputation due to the events of the last years, particularly in June 2011, but we believe that the basic framework of Kino.to is by far the best platform in the market currently and we are convinced that € 1.5 million is a perfectly justifiable price, since many users have the domain ‘Kino.to’ in their bookmarks.”

With a claim that “Kinoo.to will revolutionize the entire German market,” Baumgärtner notes that there are no plans to expand to other countries yet since licenses are not in place.

These developments are intriguing on a number of fronts, so it will be interesting to see how this one plays out in the weeks to come, particularly given the long list of Hollywood blockbusters on the Kinoo.to front page….

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Anonymous

Sounds like a pretty good plan to me dude. For sure.
total-privacy.int.tc
Anonymous

According to the MPAA/RIAA, who are (arbitrarily and unfairly) in charge of all media law enforcement worldwide, “legitimate streaming” is an oxymoron, and every government on the planet will be pressured to write laws to that effect.

In other words, this is probably going to go over about as well as Zediva.
- anon
  
  I don’t like streaming. But I hear .torrents have the best selection at the best prices.
Kan3

That’s quite a big amount. It can be a setup (honeytrap) too.
Anon

““Our goal is to provide a serious and legitimate streaming project,” Baumgärtner told TorrentFreak.”

Fair enough. Might be true.
But if it’s true the creators and rights holders must be paid for the work they do and have done to make this content, and Kino will have to find a way to monetize the streams.

Pirates will abandon this in droves. Pirates say they want clean, drm-free and affordable content, but that’s the big lie the pirates hide behind. Pirates don’t want “affordable” anything, pirates only want it free, bottom line, and we’ve seen that year in-year out for well over a decade.

Kino has badly misjudged their bookmarked “allies” and they will fail. There is no honor amongst thieves.

But we knew that about digital pirates already. Right?
- Zack Nelson
  
  While it is true that pirates want free things, pirates also want affordable content without DRM.
  
  DRM hinders how we use our media, which makes it worth while to pirate. Valve Software CEO Gabe Newell makes this same argument, and implemented a liberal DRM system with Steam. Right now Russia, a nation known for online piracy, is one of their largest European markets, having provided better services without hindering their customers.
  
  Also, you have to consider that many popular artists (mainly American Top 40) come out with $20 albums that have few good songs. Not to mention the complete lackluster quality of today’s “popular” music. Some people just can’t afford those albums, others believe today’s American Top 40 (myself included) isn’t worth paying for.
  
  I have bought several albums after pirating them, mainly for keepsakes.
- Anon2
  
  “Pirates don’t want “affordable” anything, pirates only want it free, bottom line, and we’ve seen that year in-year out for well over a decade.”
  
  That is utter bullshit and you know it.
  - Guest
    
    You’re the only one Liking your comments. GTFO TROLL
    - Anon2
      
      You need to get your eyes checked. Or are you being willfully obtuse? I must have struck a nerve. The truth tends to do that. :-p
- Anon2
  
  “Pirates don’t want “affordable” anything, pirates only want it free, bottom line, and we’ve seen that year in-year out for well over a decade.”
  
  That is utter bullshit and you know it.
- Kr0nZ
  
  I don’t hide behind that, so please don’t lump all pirates into the same group
  
  I pirate wether its affordable or not if you corps fail because of that, then ohh f!cking well.
  
  I guess ill just go outside more and make my own entertainment when u stop making tv and movies.
  
  I don’t give a sh!t about your profits
- Roger
  
  all I know is pirates want rum and booty, and to plunder merchant ships sometimes. whatever you are saying makes no sense to me
- Anonymous
  
  You are like a broken record. The exact same comment every day. Even though you have been proven wrong time and time again.
  
  DRM only hurts paying customers, pirated copies don’t have DRM.
  
  If making a copy would be theft it would be tried in criminal, guilty could mean jail and the money from the fine would go to the state. And in that case the fine would never be higher then say; driving through a red light (endangering other lives). And the fact that it was THAT specific person would have to be proven beyond the shadow of a doubt, not with an IP address.
  
  You know what i wish they would make it criminal. I’d like to see the overworked n00b police force try and fail.
  
  I think only a small portion of downloaders are pirates. The biggest group are just people who cant find what they want on licensed websites and services. And if they don’t start building those services soon they will all become pirates and there will be no way back.
  
  So no, not right.
- Fredrika
  
  > “But if it’s true the creators and rights holders must be paid for the work they do and have done to make this content..”
  
  No they do not? For the last 150 years there have been fully legitimate services in society, that on a commercial scale offers copyrighted works, free of charge, without creators and rights holders being paid anything for the work they do, and without them having any say in the matter.
  
  Whether or not creators or right holders are being paid has absolutely no relevance to whether or not a service that offers intellectual works to consumers, is considered legitimate.
  
  And for instance cyberlockers and torrent-sites, as the fully legal Piratebay, all operate within the relevant laws, and are fully legitimate. That some monopoly holders don’t like the competition they get from such sites, does not make these sites “illegitimate”.
  
  For whatever reason you made your confused statement, it is in fact completely incorrect, as it is written.
  
  > “Pirates will abandon this in droves. Pirates say they want clean, drm-free and affordable content, but that’s the big lie the pirates hide behind.”
  
  Because you say so? Or do you have any scientific evidence to back up your confused claim, about how pirates think?
  
  If that is a lie, how come AllOfMP3 and ZML.com were so successful? They offered exactly what you describe, and they were extremely successful, because of that.
  
  Another statement from you , that according to actual facts, is completely incorrect. Two for two.
  
  > “Pirates don’t want “affordable” anything, pirates only want it free, bottom line, and we’ve seen that year in-year out for well over a decade.”
  
  Wanting something for as little money as possible is called capitalism. Do you have a problem with capitalism? Are you advocating communism?
  
  > “There is no honor amongst thieves.”
  
  Well, maybe so, you might know more about thieves then the rest of us. However that irrelevant statement has nothing to do with this discussion, or the close to a billion users around the world that fileshare or stream content for free.
  
  As you know, or might not know, manufacturing copies with your own physical property, that you yourself own, and by doing so, possibly performing a copyright infringement, an intrusion into a monopoly, which is what some filesharers do, is never theft, neither according to the law or a dictionary. No owner of any property is being permanently deprived of his property, so that he no longer has access to it, when people fileshare or stream content.
  
  > “But we knew that about digital pirates already. Right?”
  
  Actually no, the points i assume you try to make are points that you yourself have fantasized up. They are not based on any facts or any kind of scientific evidence, that i ever heard of. Your initial claims were simply incorrect, and the rest seems to be nothing more that your confused and illogical fantasizes.
  
  You don’t seem comprehend most fundamental facts about either copyright, capitalism, how the free market works, different and relevant legislations, or proper use of language. With such remarkable ignorance as basis for your conclusions, you really should restrain yourself from commenting on these subjects.. =)
- http://profiles.google.com/zerianis10 Christopher Kidwell
  
  Bullcrap, Anon. I was driven to piracy by DRM, because in the past when I bought some games with StarForce (BLEGH!), I got hosed because I couldn’t play the game without a crack.
  
  No, I don’t want want things ‘free period’. I want to pay a legitimate price for things (1 dollar a TV show episode in 720p at least, 5-7 dollars for a DVD that costs 40 cents (at most) to make, and 30 dollars tops for even a “GotY” game).
  
  If they won’t give me that? I will pirate with no moral qualms about it, because I will not support their overpriced faggotry.
  - Pewterbot9
    
    You squoinked: “I will not support their overpriced faggotry”
    
    Go take your homophobic remark and shove it up your stinky hetero arse!
- bbleh
  
  It’s merely a deceptive pirate talking point.They point to any way in which a product could be bettered as a reason why they choose the free route. Until a product satisfies their wildest expectations, they see it as their duty to pilfer it.
  
  The reality on the other hand is very much different. No price is too low for them. No lack of DRM is clean enough of them, In complaining about the lack of legal digital services (and how the industry needs to adapt to the 21st century), they only affirm that they refuse to acknowledge the multitude of digital services out there such as xbox live and itunes. In demanding that movies be reduced in price to $2, they only demonstrate that they understand as much about the entertainment industry as a rock.
  
  Pirates complain about DRM when not too surprisingly they are the reason for it. People proved that they can’t be trusted. When given the choice to compensate the creator or just think of themselves, the vast majority choose to flip off the artists. Complaining about how you have been wronged by drm is pretty dumb given how much piracy there is. All pirates are doing is proving the industry’s point that many, many people only care about themselves.
  - Floppy Copy
    
    Like most of the folks that comment here, I am both a file sharer and a consumer. It isn’t one or the other as both are the same. I feel sorry for your bitterness and skewed view of so-called “pirates”. Maybe your an artist, or maybe your a middleman. I can only assume that you feel wronged somehow, perhaps even a little betrayed, and therefore have some compulsive, petty urge to get back at those you perceive as your offenders. Now you know how many sharers/consumers feel due to your actions. So long as both sides refuse to work together to find some middle ground, things will only get worse for everyone, the industry you care about most of all.
    
    Oh you can get all the laws passed that you want, but it isn’t going to stop anyone. No law has ever done that in all of human history. They exist purely as the means by which we punish fellow humans, not as a rule book you have to follow “or else” despite what some foolishly believe. All things are transitory, morality most of all. One day it is perfectly alright to burn “witches”, the next it is not. The thing the suits need to consider, and I mean really put a lot of thought into, is which side will win in the long protracted battle of wills that is underway. Consumers will always be consumers, and there is only so much money they can afford to spend on frivolous things. Corporations, on the other hand, can and do collapse all the time. Sometimes it’s due to a failure to understand a chosen demographic, other times it is from mismanagement, and sometimes it is simply a failure to see and meet consumer demand. In the case of the collapsing copyright industry, it will be all of these reasons I think.
    
    The really sad thing is that your post might have had some measly scrap of merit, if it wasn’t so easily proven wrong. AllOfMP3 is a perfect example, and by far not the only one. If what you say is true, these services would no have been the raging success that they were. Capitalism is about competing, not suing. Somewhere along the line this has been forgotten, perhaps due to the false belief we commonly see parroted here that you cannot compete with free, which we all know is total hogwash. More likely it is just typical human behavior, which tends to be self destructive more often than not, especially when you let your emotions get involved.
    
    What you suits out there really need to do is stop listening to the lawyers that are whispering in your ears. Lawyers who don’t give one whit about you, only that you continue to pay them large sums of money to make all the bad people stop hurting you, something they cannot accomplish, nor wish to, because it would mean an end to their cash flow. Put that money to better use, like figuring out how to monetize what you think cannot be monetized. I’d wager that if you had done that right from the start, rather than fighting the inevitable sweeping change that is a fundamental law of our universe, we wouldn’t even be posting here today. While your chances for survival may be getting slimmer with each passing day, it is never too late to make amends and at least try. It won’t work if you do not put your feelings about file sharers aside however. Emotion has no place in economics, but logic and reason do. Something to think about anyways.
  - Scary Devil Monastery
    
    Bull. Utter bull.
    
    Every serious study commissioned so far shows that pirates spend far more money on legal media than the average consumer. What they don’t spend money on is overpriced crap.
    
    According to your arguments the 25% dip in music piracy noticed in Sweden when Spotify was introduced didn’t exist, since “pirates” wouldn’t ever support a legal service?
    
    So no, please stop wordwalling everyone with pure nonsense.
  - http://twitter.com/icanhazsake Ninja
    
    I take it is your opinion and an opinion only. Your comment is far from reality. While I do believe there exist the types of pirates you describe out there you are generalizing.
    
    You talk about xbox live and itunes as if they were the solution for all problems. Well, itunes does not offer lossless flac. And itunes is Apple. I don’t buy from apple. There’s Amazon too but I still have issues to pay since they seem to think the US = the world. And I happen to own an xbox but what if I didn’t? Ok we have Steam (same payment problems but nvm me) but what will happen in 15 years when they don’t exist or they stop providing support for their DRM games? I still play 20 yr old games. And I’m glad they are MINE and I can do whatever I want with them, now or 15 years in the future.
    
    Pirates are not the reason for DRM. The entertainment industry’s own myopia is to blame for DRM. Such measures don’t bother pirates. Pirates circumvent them, easily. Legit users have to bear with them. I, as a legit consumer, know better: when I decide to buy something I will keep the DRM free copy (or download it in the cases I managed to check the content before by legit means).
    
    As for ppl caring for themselves only, just Google about how MAFIAA screws up the artists. I’m gonna save you some time in the music business with a few links (hollywood accounting linked inside these articles):
    
    http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110808/04134515432/emi-doesnt-pay-royalties-it-does-to-wrong-people-it-doesnt-maybe-it-does.shtml
    http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100712/23482610186.shtml
    
    Eat it. Before spitting at the ‘pirates’ take a look at your own rotten industry.
- US dissidant
  
  Copyright owners (corporate suites that do nothing but handle contracts, money, and distribution rights) want a monopoly on entertainment, we have seen this for the past 100 years. Piracy is finally introducing REAL competition, the fact that it is free keeps the monopoly in check. We need piracy to prevent the “copyright owners” from using entertainment to shape the population into their dream mutation of brain dead cash cows. GO PIRATES!
- Scary Devil Monastery
  
  Quite a few serious government studies disagree with you, where it has been established quite well that afficionados who pirate a lot also tend to be the biggest spenders. Depending on the focus of the study, “pirates” spend between 2 and 4 times as much money on legal media than non-pirates do.
  
  So no, any legal service with a decent business model and good value for money will indeed attract pirates.
  
  Of course, according to your statement above, the 25% dip in music piracy noticed in Sweden when Spotify was introduced is just an inconvenient fact you’d rather not have around trouncing your arguments, right?.
- http://twitter.com/icanhazsake Ninja
  
  …creators and rights holders must be paid for the work they do and have done to make this content…
  
  Must? Would you pay for a bad product, a product that didn’t do what you expected it to do? This is no different than you trolls saying pirates feel they are “entitled” to everything for free. The word is not must, the word is SHOULD be paid if the content is actually worth the money.
Anonymous

http://tinyurl.com/4skyaqr
Pingback: P2PTalk » Busted Pirate Movie Site Primed For Grand 1.5 Million Euro Rebirth
Ggggggggggggg

Time will tell if NinjaVideo ever gets resurrected after that nasty FBI bust.
- Anonco
  
  It’s possible to resurrect any website. You only need to be SMARTER than the previous arrested admins. In ninja video case, they were not that smart… When you run this type of website, you need to be 100% offshore, has your database in a country where they dont give a shit about what your website is about.
  More hunt on admin of “pirate” or “rogue website” , will lead admins to hide like they are terrorist…
  - http://pulse.yahoo.com/_IZ5BM5GNLA54OADSWGSXAMA7SY Jay
    
    And less likely to work with the movie industry in the future.
http://twitter.com/AlyssaBlindy Alyssa Blindy

I don’t know, it may not have been the best idea in the entire world to give out the names of the people in the company that took over the domain.
I wonder, probably along with many, how kino.to will become legitimate streaming. I wonder if they will actually monotize content, or continue to leave it free. Will it be paid for by advertisements? I am very curious what the site will turn into, and how many visitors the site will get.
I guess only time can tell.
pumuckl

This is fake, kinoo.to is not kino.to, kinoo.to is video2k.tv. He crawled kinox.to and movie2k.to. Kinoo.to has not the kino.to database and this is not the same script, just a crappy clone of kinox.to. Video2k.tv = Tim Cammann a random “pumuckl” nerd http://www.pumucklhomepage.de/special_d/bilder/pumuckl.jpg
https://thepiratebay.org/user/manOtor/ manOtor

Only have been once to kino.to to see what it’s all about, didn’t like it and turned to better solutions to satisfy my needs :D!

But from what you can tell by first impression on a quick visit on kinoo.to right now, it’s up and running, even without ads when you run an adblocker, movies seem to stream o.k.
Who cares whether it’s a crappy clone or not?

But it still raises indeed the question on how they are going to monetize the content, as it still is for free.
Hmmm.

However, I don’t think TF made the name public without authorization, and as we all know, the original kino.to went down the hill because there was evidently the suspicion, that the site owners and operators had several deals behind the scene going on to fill their own pockets with money, either by misleading people to download codecs they then had to pay for, making money through their one click hoster accounts (ddl), or placing adware on careless user’s computers.

Without actual criminal activity in the background the site has a good chance to survive, … for now ;).
foff

Who the stupid freak would pay that kind of money for a linking site., If netsucks can’t get a good legal selection of movies to stream how could a former pirate site? Some stupid russian is being taken to the cleaners.
- Efe
  
  nah its perfectly easy to have that kind of money, you just have to know how to make it
Whack-A-Mole

Bazinga!
Rekrul

So Kino.to is going to go legit? I’m sure it will be every bit as popular as the legit versions of Mininova and Napster…
Dalmaton

Kinoo GMBH not existing in German Company Network. This is fake information to gain traffic.. You got fooled.
- Anonymous
  
  The documents (of the domain sale) we’ve seen look legit and if we were fooled then these people have put a lot of work in it.
  
  That said, we take these claims very serious and will follow it up. The mysterious status of the company demands an explanation. If it turns out that these people haven’t been telling the truth then will will correct this asap.
  - http://pulse.yahoo.com/_IZ5BM5GNLA54OADSWGSXAMA7SY Jay
    
    What concerns me is how this was drawn up. It may be that this new corporation is a shill of GEMA (as an example) getting the new domain for pennies on the dollar and using the police to take down sites. Depending on where this occurred, there’s a lot more questions to ask than answers.
Anonymous

This makes a whole lot of sense dude, I mean like reallty.
real-privacy.no.tc
Anonymous

This sounds like the GGF-X ‘takeover’ of TPB. Got pwned after the statement on TPB’s wobsite.
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Kino_xy

You are beeing fooled 100%.

I will proove, kinOO.to belongs to the video2k.tv owner, video2k.tv belongs to the old duckload.com owner, you can research this information on google.

ping kinOO.to [91.202.61.172] =
ping video2k.tv [91.202.61.172]

kino.to and duckload.com were busted some month ago (researchable on google). All kinO.to were arrested beside video2k.tv owner, who is still escaped (researchable on google). kinoX.to already did action on this reports and created own sites like kIIno.to and kinoW.to (you can check yourself on kinoX.to) with all data from video2k.tv owner in impressum.
Kino_xy

You are beeing fooled 100%.

I will proove, kinOO.to belongs to the video2k.tv owner, video2k.tv belongs to the old duckload.com owner, you can research this information on google.

ping kinOO.to [91.202.61.172] =
ping video2k.tv [91.202.61.172]

kino.to and duckload.com were busted some month ago (researchable on google). All kinO.to were arrested beside video2k.tv owner, who is still escaped (researchable on google). kinoX.to already did action on this reports and created own sites like kIIno.to and kinoW.to (you can check yourself on kinoX.to) with all data from video2k.tv owner in impressum.
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Anonymous

http://tinyurl.com/4skyaqr
Anonymous

http://tinyurl.com/4skyaqr
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