Download Site Founder Receives 4.5 Year Jail Sentence, Forfeits $4.7m

enigmax
June 15, 2012
93
Kino.to
Print

The founder of one of Europe’s former leading illicit movie streaming portals has been convicted. The man, known as Dirk B, received a reduced sentence after giving a full confession and apology for this activities on Kino.to, the site hit by a massive international police operation in 2011. Despite his overtures, Dirk B received a 4.5 year jail sentence and was ordered to forfeit $4.7m of the claimed $8m he earned from the site.

In June 2011, the biggest ever operation aimed at tackling online movie piracy took place in Europe. The target for police in Germany, Spain, France, and the Netherlands was movie-streaming portal Kino.to and its affiliates.

More than a dozen people were arrested and since then various individuals have been brought to justice. The latest to face punishment is the site’s founder.

Known only as Dirk B due to German privacy laws which protect the identities of suspected criminals, the 39-year-old faced an extended stay in prison after prosecutors requested an 11 year sentence.

However, after cooperating with authorities and confessing to a sample 1.1 million instances of copyright infringement and being responsible for a file-hosting service linked to Kino.to, the court decided to hand down a much reduced sentence.

According to Deutsche Welle, District Court judge Karsten Nickel described the case as the “most serious” copyright breach ever to come before the courts in Germany. He went on to hand Dirk B a 4.5 year jail sentence.

The prosecution said that the operators of Kino.to generated huge profits through advertising and so-called “subscription trap” schemes. As part of his plea bargain, Dirk B agreed to hand over around $4.7m of the claimed $8m he made in revenue through his Spanish advertising company.

Dirk B is the 6th person to be sentenced in the Kino.to case.

In December 2011, 33-year-old web designer Marcus V. was handed 2.5 years in prison for his role in the site. A week later 27-year-old Martin S. – reportedly the main admin of Kino.to and brother-in-law of Dirk B. – received a 3 year sentence.

Later in December an unemployed IT assistant received 1 year 9 months probation after he confessed to uploading pirate movies and TV shows to Kino.to servers between June 2009 to July 2011.

A week later a 47-year-old server operator was sentenced to 3 years and 5 months in prison after being found guilty of storing more than 10,700 movies for paid subscription access.

In April this year, Kino.to’s 29-year-old lead programmer was sentenced to three years and ten months in prison.

Previous Post | Next Post

Follow @torrentfreak

Anyone

that’s more than murderers get
the system is fucked up
- Guest
  
  Murderers get life. Stop sprouting your ignorance.
  - Guest33
    
    I suppose he meant people who kill. Of course “murder” is often premeditated killing of a human being without justification, and those often get life, though life sentences in Europe aren’t truly life sentences. But manslaughter or drunk driving, rape and even child abuse often only result in four-eight years imprisonment.
    
    Only the UK really enforces any meaningful life sentences. In other European countries, life usually means 10-16 years subject to parole.
    - Guest3432432
      
      Nah, drunk drivers and other kind of deaths due to driving tend to be let off very lightly too.
      
      *The best* way to murder someone, use a car. Just claim you sneezed or a “momentary lapse of concentration”.
    - yello
      
      point still stands…. “lets ruin a guys life for a period of time” cause he was a minute contributer to the problematic “piracy” which may damage 1% of profit per year…
    - mwhahaha
      
      There’s a difference between a crime against an individual and a crime against ‘society’ I’d imagine, with, in this case, the crime being seen to be against the larger society. (in my view it’s actually a crime against a media cartel, but hey… there you go).
      
      I’m not defending the sentence, but it helps to see how they get there, rather than just go ‘oh that’s silly’.
    - austintommy
      
      my buddy’s step-mother makes $62 hourly on the internet. She has been out of a job for 6 months but last month her check was $20978 just working on the internet for a few hours. Read more here
      
      ?????? (Click On My Name For Link)
    - Guest
      
      Mwhahaha:
      
      It’s important to remember that under most law systems, any criminal action is an attack against society, while civil infractions are violations against individuals. This even applies to crimes like murder or assault/battery. The state can choose to prosecute those even though the individual may not want to, because it is society that is prosecuting, not the individual.
      
      I think the justification that they use for the sentences is that they consider piracy to be an economic crime. If it is viewed in this way, then it’s not hard to see how the sentence could be higher than it would be for accidental manslaughter or even murder; economic crimes can be considered to do damage to enough people to justify the sentences (and I do think that’s a good thing. Criminals such as the former executives at Enron do more damage than any murderer). That being said, I don’t think piracy should be considered as this type of crime, but I do think that is the justification that the anti-pirates use.
    - VasquezNadine
      
      my best friend’s sister-in-law got paid $14696 the prior month. she is making money on the inte<!–truth is almight–>rnet and bought a $372500 home. All she did was get blessed and work up the steps uncovered on this link
      
      ?????? (Click On My Name For Link)
  - Anons
    
    Not in the UK they don’t. They get a slap on the wrist and community service.
    - Guest33
      
      Even though I don’t live in the UK, I am sure you are wrong. See Vinter & Ors v United Kingdom [2012] ECHR 61 (17 January 2012). In that case, The European Court of Human Rights upheld several life sentences imposed pursuant to UK criminal justice.
  - Anyone
    
    in the US
    not in Germany, at least not necessary
    - Andrew Lee
      
      If you want to get away with murder here in the USA all you have to do is get drunk then run them over. You’ll end up with a DUI and having weekly AA meetings lol..
    - Anyone
      
      or do it in Florida
      just be sure you are either female or your victim is black (bonuspoints for both)
  - Blah
    
    maybe in your butt-fuck-hole USA they do, most places it’s much much less.
  - This Is Justice. Cute!
    
    In Britain a man convicted of involuntary manslaughter was sentenced to do a few months of community service
    
    Convict A: Yo I killed man. I serve 8 months in community service. What about you?
    Convict B: I serve 4.5 years jail for downloading some digital crap
    - http://www.facebook.com/people/Gear-Mentation/100003097514663 Gear Mentation
      
      Killing involuntarily should not be punished. That’s called and “accident.” Yes there can be some fault, but don’t equate it with murder in any real way.
  - http://profiles.google.com/zerianis10 Christopher Kidwell
    
    Stop spouting your nonsense, Guest. I know quite a few people (I can rattle them off straight from the listings of State Attorney in my state if I wished to) who got only 5 years in prison for killing another person, even pre-meditated.
  - banker = wanker
    
    he should have said….
    
    that’s more than the bankers that lost stole trillions get.
  - Efsdfsd
    
    Apparently you have been out of touch from reality for waayyyy tooooo long.
  - http://twitter.com/PensionForLife PensionForLife
    
    Murders get life?? What are you on about in the UK And Ireland… They usually get 5 years so you need to wake up you idiot :D
  - Dave
    
    You don’t live in Canada. Murderers get at couple years. Usually less than drug dealers.
  - Spencer greff
    
    Well what is murder? A waitress friend of mine lost her ex husband, and two girls, 7 and 9. To a trucker who had a record for driving under the influence of various hard drugs. He was out in 4 years. He was also seen throwing hard liquor into the back of the cement truck and refused the breathalyser.
  - Chameleon87
    
    Just for the records..
    In Germany (where most of the Kino.to guys are), a life sentence means 10 years maximum.
    It’s usually less than that, and doesn’t account for the fact that you can get out much earlier due to good behaviour in some cases.
  - http://www.facebook.com/people/Johnny-Cash/100002427462340 Johnny Cash
    
    “Life”
  - mwhahaha
    
    and don’t carrot your ignorance either!
  - Chaosritter
    
    “Life” means 15 years in Germany, since locking someone up for good, no matter what he did, is considered inhuman.
    
    “Resocializing” these guys costs several million Euros each, not to mention all the support they get, namely free apartments, sponsored jobs and shit.
  - lattari
    
    No they don’t. In my country (Finland) the most common homicide sentence is 9-10 years of which people serve either 1/3, 1/2 or 2/3 depending of age and wether its their only conviction in the last three year period. Even ‘life sentence’ here is on average 12 years and can not be more then 20.
- http://otester.myopenid.com/ PiRat
  
  All they did was provide a competing service…
- GolluPollu
  
  So small, I just wait next release to download. If they became millionaires and pay cash 4. 000. 000.- euros penalty, what heck is 4 year prison time, (but there can be only one Mega…)
Guest33

Stupid kids, if you really want to do piracy, confessing and grovelling is the most shameful and treasonous act.
German prisons are very comfy. Remember how the Ninjavideo kids all licked the government’s ass acepting plea bargains instead of going to trial. Pirates who get caught and convicted aren’t usually the smartest lot.

People who do large scale visible piracy for the money beg for government attention.
Guest

Paid subscription scheme for pirated movies? They deserve all they get. They had it coming. I hope they get banged hard in prison.
- Guest33
  
  Prison rape and sexual abuse is no legitimate societal punishment. If you believe that anyone “deserves” extrajudicial punishment while under the state’s protection, you are no better than the mafia.
  - Asrgf
    
    Sounds like someone has been prison raped before.
- Anyone
  
  it wasn’t a paid subscription scheme
  it was just a site that collected links from various cyberlockers and embedded those videos to stream
  
  it was a decent service for people unwilling or unable to use torrents
- Andrew Lee
  
  Hate to burst your bubble but prison is not this so called “rape fest” you think it is. The worst time you will have is the time you spend locked up in county.
  
  Even then it’s not that bad and I’ve been in some rough jails around St. Louis and Chicago. The COs act worse than the inmates…
  
  You need to stop watching MSNBC Lockup it’s confusing you rofl.
  - http://profiles.google.com/zerianis10 Christopher Kidwell
    
    Quite true. I have never heard of anyone being raped or even forced into sexual encounters against their will, unless it was a GUARD who is FEMALE being raped by the prisoners when she is stupid enough (or someone sets her up) to be left alone with a bunch of prisoners.
    - Guest
      
      Studies done in the last decade in the U.S., the U.K. and France found that between 9% and 20% of prisoners claimed sexual assault against them while in prison. Just because you haven’t heard of them doesn’t mean they didn’t happen. To assume so is a fallacy. Consider this; you haven’t heard about it because news organizations don’t care about prison rape; the stories about it don’t sell papers, so they don’t bother to write about it.
    - http://www.facebook.com/people/Gear-Mentation/100003097514663 Gear Mentation
      
      Well, from the jailbird relative I have, yes it’s kind of gang controlled in there. And if you don’t get in with the right crowd anything can happen.
    - delude yourself
      
      Reality check.
      
      What you going to lose ?
      
      Lifers want sex. They are there for life. End of.
Violated0

Nice $3.3 million profit and 4.5 years (or less) in a Government approved holiday camp… or something like that.
- Guest
  
  Yeah I sure the site owner is ecstatic to be able to enjoy a free vacation at the Government approved holiday camp for 4.5 years.
  - Guest32432423
    
    Probably durning the time no, but after – $3.3million and saving 4.5 years of rent, electricity and food.
    
    Being a “soft” offence – good behaviour out in 2?
    - Guest
      
      yeah if just have have good behaviour, and sentence will be cutted to half so its only 2 years… but he will lose those 4.7$ million dollars if i was him i would have put those to swiss bank account or other banks that very high privacy polices… then money would be save… it would inscreace jail time homever it does not matter you get out of prison then just move out of country then cash out and enjoy.
    - Guest
      
      to add still: i am sure that there ppl who actually to that… but if you make money or profit from pirace it is agaist spirit of free culture.. and you deserve to go jail…
    - http://profiles.google.com/zerianis10 Christopher Kidwell
      
      Only in your opinion, Guest, do they ‘deserve to go to jail’.
    - Guest
      
      So, Guest, you think they deserve to go to jail because they violated YOUR ideal of what it is to be a good pirate? That’s fucking horrible. I’d much rather have people actively selling other people’s works on the streets in the pirate movement instead of having judgmental, prison-loving fuckwits like you in the movement.
Pingback: Download Site Founder Receives 4.5 Year Jail Sentence, Forfeits $4.7m
Pingback: Notrackingme | Proxy » Blog Archive » Download Site Founder Receives 4.5 Year Jail Sentence, Forfeits $4.7m
http://www.junkfoodjunkie.no/ PoPSiCLe

Why not seize all the funds he earned? Is there a reason why he gets to keep 3.3 million of it? Given of course that the rest is available as ready funds – he might have spent it, of course.

But, 4.5 years in prison? For copyright infringement? Seriously? Why?
1. He’s not hurt anyone (financially, probably, but still),
2. The site is offline – and with a bit of handholding, I’m sure one can prevent him from starting a new one.
3. The amount of money earned on this is quite small – given that the MPAA/RIAA seek damages up to and above billions, they seem to not really understand the market (nothing new there).
4. As others have stated, white-collar crimes get punished often more severe than rape or manslaugther. Granted, I mostly agree on the lax manslaughter sentences – if you unintentionally take a life, you have to live with that the rest of your life, and that’s pretty harsh in itself.

This is completely ridiculus – fine, by all means, try to stop the copyright infringers, but seriously, try to take down the guys who’s really making money of this shit – a couple millions is nothing, nada, nilch.

Try to take out the Chinese, who pirates everything, even cars. Problem is, they condone it, and don’t give a fuck about western law. If only they had a bit more leniency regarding Internet and using it, it would be the ideal place to have the servers…
- Anyone
  
  the site is online under a new domain (and probably new management)
  it was kino.to, it is now kinox.to
  
  so yay, big victory for the MAFIAA
  didn’t close the site, lost the last few remaining sympathies from people, great success.
  - ThumbsUpThumbsDown
    
    The first part of getting the right answer is asking the right question. Therefore, is kinox.to now run by the FBI?
Viciouzex

In USA you just claim insanity and never have to suffer any consequences :)
- Guest
  
  Bullshit. If someone claims mental illness, they first have to A. have it verified by multiple professionals, and B. convince the judge that their mental illness acted as such a fundamental impiarment to their judgement that they couldn’t act under their own will. The standards on proving that are high; once that is claimed, the burden of proof has shifted off of the prosecution and onto the defense, because the defense needs to back up their claim in the eyes of the judge. Even big diseases, like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, may not be ruled as fundamentally impairing someone’s mental state to the point where they are not responsible for their actions.
  
  In addition, if someone is found innocent due to insanity, they have to be confined and treated until they are found to be at a level of functioning in a normal society. For many patients, that never happens, and the time spent in the institution can easily outlast the prison sentence they may have had otherwise.
  
  Because of this, the insanity defense is rarely used in the U.S. It is more often used in the U.K., because the standards for proof are lower (not to mention that nowhere in the U.K. is the insanity defense banned, (to my knowledge) as compared to 4 states in the U.S.)
  
  Please, learn at least the first thing about the law before posting bullshit. You might actually learn something.
Jakirobi

Guys, site is available 2 weeks after close as kinox.to

Its completly the same.
Pingback: Torrent News » Download Site Founder Receives 4.5 Year Jail Sentence, Forfeits $4.7m
Pingback: Download Site Founder Receives 4.5 Year Jail Sentence, Forfeits $4.7m | Best Seedbox
mark

Let money make you greedy and you will get caught sometime along the line. When you are ahead quit and wait awhile then restart up again later…

prison for just for sharing a movies and other stuff makes this worse than me running someone over, or glassing someone? I think not…
sungosang

Wow no way man thats like totalyl messed up. Wow.
Anony-Web.tk
YARIGHT

and dummies wonder why i said streaming was stupid all your doing is giving them a perfect way to toss your heads to a early grave.

anyways
“so what ya in for and how long”
“i killed a man an d his family while driving drunk and got 3 years”
“i helped a streaming site for movies and tv …4.5 years”

wow sad i can literally kill someone and get less time
- Baba
  
  You will get less for many things. Raping a child, stabbing somebody, drunk driving, breaking into somebodys house, armed robbery… all of these are considered less serious of a crime than letting somebody watch a tv show.
  - Desu1
    
    It comes down to State vs. Federal jurisdiction.
    - GUEST
      
      There’s no state vs federal jurisdiction in Germany, you dummy.
Mental Extension

“A week later a 47-year-old server operator was sentenced to 3 years and 5 months in prison after being found guilty of storing more than 10,700 movies for paid subscription access.”

This is the duckload.com owner, right?
Guest

“More than a dozen people were arrested and since then various individuals have been brought to justice.”

Bag enigmax!

You should have put the word justice in quotes.
- Guest
  
  *Bad enigmax
  
  Bad typist.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Gear-Mentation/100003097514663 Gear Mentation
  
  Eh, sounds like they were nasties, they were selling other people’s copyrighted works. This is just the kind of thing that we as pirates should despise. Free cultural exchange is one thing, selling it really is stealing.
Asashii

Bull horns hurt HUH, anyone who shares, thumbs up anyone who profits, where you can just imagine where i think that thumb should go, Share for Share Sake !!!
ThumbsUpThumbsDown

Because we’ve lived with it so long; because it is present in so much of our lives; and, because it involves nothing less than the packaging and distribution of Ideas, it is all but impossible for Individual Citizens to recognize either the vast economic pillaging that Corporate Copyright Monopolies get away with by virtue of their legislatively protected status under existing Copyright Law, or the imminent threat they represent to Constitutional and Civil Liberties.

That Digital Filesharing on the Internet is today a Crime is a socially inequitable, economically inefficient, and politically corrupting, Official Truism.

Not ALL Official Truisms debase Humanity. In fact, Democratic Governments have found their way by sheer luck or dint of rare dilligence to those Official Truisms that are the bedrock of the Constitution….

But those Official Truisms that HAVE debased Humanity have left no shred of Human hope or Human Dignity or Human Purpose untouched…….The German Nation commited mechanized Mass Murder…..The Great American Democracy enslaved its Black population….The great and uplifting British Empire turned coastal Chinese cities into opium dens….and…..

And the current American Government…….Chooses to tell its citizens….with increasing criminalization…..that the best and only acceptable social custody and management of Intellectual Property lies with a few Monopoly Corporations in perpetuity…….That legislatively protected Digital Distributors should be entitled to charge all users of Intellectual Property an unearned economic premium forever….that the nullification of the Constitutional rights of Individual Citizens is the acceptable collateral damage of protecting the pecuniary prviledges of Copyright Holders….that protecting the rights and interests of Creative Artists is co-extensive and equivalent to to protecting the rights and interests of the existing Copyright Monopolies…….

Of course……people don’t accept these Official Truisms…..because they’re obvious lies…..

…They refuse to follow these Copyright Laws…..because they are abusive….

They opt for other forms of Intellectual Property distribution…because they make more sense…..

So…the government calls them criminals….

Does this mean that the people have become criminals….or…

……That the Government has made itself irrelevant?
Pingback: Download Site Founder Receives 4.5 Year Jail Sentence, Forfeits $4.7m | SpamBlog
Pingback: Download Site Founder Receives 4.5 Year Jail Sentence, Forfeits $4.7m | The Illuminati
MEGA-chicken

Has anyone been able to prove ‘actual damage’ from downloading?
- Desu1
  
  It’s not about proving, it’s about convincing. That’s how these sort of cases work
Gae

‘ The man, known as Dirk B, received a reduced sentence after giving a full confession and apology for this activities on Kino.to’

If that was me I would have taken the longer sentence just so I could tell them to shove their apology so far up their ass that they have to call a dentist to remove it.
http://profile.yahoo.com/PCKIRANTV2G46WJLWDCBG5BR4E Craig

just as Phillip replied I cannot believe that some one can make $9138 in 4 weeks on the internet. did you look at this webpage (Click on menu Home more information) http://goo.gl/Z3xLr
Pingback: Download Site Founder Receives 4.5 Year Jail Sentence, Forfeits $4.7m | Zombie Torrents - Ultimate Torrents Downloads
Asdf

I could never call this travesty “justice”.
I went there

This guy is going behind bars for half a year longer than Conrad Murray. This man allowed people illegal access to movies, Conrad Murray murdered Michael Jackson.
Justice?

Fuck no.
Rekrul

So all these sites are supposedly raking in millions of dollars, but yet the entertainment industry can’t figure out how to make money on the net…
- HoopahHoopah
  
  Exactly! $8 million raked in by a site set up and run by a handful of people, for providing a service that could theoretically be completely free, and that provided exactly what a sizable market wanted…and yet the entertainment industry keeps their head in the sand, trying to stop these sites from existing instead of running them themselves or partnering with them…just so they fool themselves in to thinking they can sell more region-locked DVDs and Blu-Rays …
Mpaa

it is way more exciting to setup a file sharing site if you know you may get life in prison. just dont get caught
Desu1

Sounds like he was running a subscription service. That’s true bootlegging. Bye
Pingback: Top 10 Entertaining Stories of the Day – June 16th 2012
GUEST

Copyright infringement = 4.5-8 years
Fraud = 0-5 years
Murder (manslaughter or homicide) = 2 years to life (~16 years)

…Much wrong w/ the system?
Pingback: MakinMo's Tech Blog
Pingback: The Technology Blog: Download Site Founder Receives 45 Year Jail Sentence Forfeits 47m
Pingback: makin257 - Download Site Founder Receives 4.5 Year Jail Sentence, Forfeits $4.7m
Pingback: Download Site Founder Receives 4.5 Year Jail Sentence, Forfeits $4.7m - Webmaster Forum: Webhosting, SEO, Internet Marketing
Anonymous

i find it ridiculous that someone can receive such an inflated sentence for ‘committing such crimes’, but those responsible for the financial meltdown of the whole planet basically got no punishment at all, or at least nothing worth speaking of. and fuck me, the world is still feeling the effects of that meltdown even now, plus we as ordinary citizens are being screwed more and more to cover their arses, paying for their mistakes, not ours! how fair is that?? seems that punishing for the sharing of a music or movie file is of higher priority than the finances of the entire planet!!
Pingback: Download Site Founder Receives 4.5 Year Jail Sentence, Forfeits $4.7m | Mediafire Search Engine
http://security-alarm-systems.com/ adt home security

Later in December an unemployed IT assistant received 1 year 9 months probation after he confessed to uploading pirate movies and TV shows to Kino.to servers between June 2009 to July 2011.
http://discountairportcarrental.com/car-rental-miami/ miami car hire

That Digital Filesharing on the Internet is today a Crime is a socially
inequitable, economically inefficient, and politically corrupting,
Official Truism.
Pingback: New Fringe iPhone and Android Apps Available for Download | Computer is traag

TorrentFreak

The place where breaking news, BitTorrent and copyright collide

Download Site Founder Receives 4.5 Year Jail Sentence, Forfeits $4.7m

Related Posts

Previous Post | Next Post

NewsBits

The Pirate Bay Isn’t Down Completely, Just Having a Few Issues

Pirate Bay Founder Gottfrid Svartholm on Freedom of Speech

Blu-ray Anti-Piracy Tech Stops Discs and Promotes Purchases

Foxtel Breeds Pirates by Locking Up Game of Thrones

UK Student Admits Breaching Sony Copyrights With Leak of PS3 SDK

MostDiscussed

Pirate Bay Takes Over Distribution of Censored 3D Printable Gun

McAfee Patents Technology to Detect and Block Pirated Content

Pirate Bay Finds Safe Haven in Iceland, Switches to .IS Domain

Copyright Trolls Threaten to Call Neighbors of Accused Porn Pirates

The Pirate Bay Moves to .SX as Prosecutor Files Motion to Seize Domains

CopyQuote

PopularArticles

VPN Services That Take Your Anonymity Seriously, 2013 Edition

Top 10 Most Popular Torrent Sites of 2013

Which VPN Service Providers Really Take Anonymity Seriously?

What’s The Best VPN / Proxy for BitTorrent?

BTGuard Review: How Does it Work?

Optimize Your BitTorrent Download Speed