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.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

An international operation shut down the movie streaming portal Kino.to and police made more than a dozen arrests. As collateral damage, several file-hosting services connected to Kino.to also went down.

A few days ago Skyload.net, another cyberlocker with connections to Kino.to, was raided and shut down while the site’s alleged operator Maik P. was arrested. According to the authorities the 28-year-old operator was personally responsible for uploading more than 10,000 films .

The German anti-piracy outfit GVU reports that after Kino.to was shut down Skyload continued its operation by linking unauthorized streams and downloads to alternative movie portals such as kinoX.to.

Together with the operator of Skyload, the police also arrested Marcel E., the 25-year-old owner of the site’s hosting provider. Aside from providing hosting services to the cyberlocker, the Internet provider is also alleged to have hosted servers to release groups and movie streaming portals.

How tight the connections were between the hosting provider and the file-sharing services is unclear from the information currently being made public. It is quite unusual for a hosting provider to get arrested for alleged crimes that were committed through clients.

Both men have been charged with copyright-related offenses and face up to several years in prison if they’re found guilty. Several other people connected to the Kino.to ring have already gone on trial for their part in the site’s operation and the main admin was recently sentenced to three years in prison.

Together with the Megaupload shutdown, the actions against sites affiliated with Kino.to have drastically changed the cyberlocker business. In particular, rewards programs for uploaders became a liability and have been dropped by dozens of sites.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Last week, 33-year-old web designer Marcus V. was handed 2.5 years in prison by a Leipzig court for his role in the site. Today we bring news of another sentencing.

The defendant, named as 27-year-old Martin S., confessed to being Kino.to’s “main admin”. He stood accused of being jointly responsible for 1.1 million instances of commercial copyright infringement that allegedly took place via the site.

Reportedly the brother-in-law of former Kino.to owner Dirk B., Martin S. was also said to run a file-hosting site that contained more than 16,700 movies used as a source by Kino.to’s index.

The trained car mechanic from Leipzig allegedly brought in nearly 400,000 euros via site advertising and what were described in court as “subscription traps”, services that suck unsuspecting users into expensive recurring payments for otherwise free products.

Once site costs had been taken into consideration, it was claimed that between August 2009 and the closure of Kino.to in June 2011, Martin S. made around 230,000 euros for himself .

In his ruling Judge Mathias Winderlich said that the defendant was primarily motivated by the possibility of making “quick and easy money” and that his income “exceeded by far that of the general population.”

The District Court in Leipzig found Martin S. guilty of criminal copyright infringement and sentenced him to 3 years in jail, four months less than the time demanded by the prosecution. According to Bild, the state also confiscated his house, Audi A6 and bank accounts. There will be no appeal.

At least 5 other Kino.to suspects remain in custody, and another 20 people remain under investigation. The trial of another site admin will be heard next week.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The popular movie streaming portal Kino.to was shut down and a dozen people connected to the site were arrested. As collateral damage, several file-hosting services connected to Kino.to also went down.

In total 13 persons connected to the site were arrested, and last Friday a 33-year-old web designer was sentenced to 2,5 years in prison by a Leipzig court.

The man confessed being part of the site, and is the first person who’s convicted.

In the ruling the judge noted that “at kino.to it was purely about making money.”

During the investigation the police discovered bank accounts totaling 2.5 million euro.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

One of the file-hosting sites that suffered due to the raids was Duckload.com. The cyberlocker site lost 400 servers, worth more than 2 million dollars in total. The authorities also tried to arrest one of the operators of the cyberlocker, but for months they were unable to locate him.

Two days ago the authorities finally managed to track the fugitive down in Delmenhorst, Germany. The Attorney General’s Office in Dresden reports that the suspect was arrested for his connections to Kino.to, and also for his involvement in Video2k.tv, a movie linking portal that was launched after the raids.

The arrested is assumed to be Tim C, the operator of the file-hosting service Duckload.

After the raids on their servers in June, the people behind the site quickly redirected the Duckload.com domain to Video2k.tv, a site that was probably an even bigger threat to the entertainment industry. Video2k.tv was a complete video streaming portal, without ads and free of charge.

Coinciding with the arrest this weekend Video2k.tv went offline.

Reports from the German anti-piracy outfit GVU also link the suspect to Kinoo.to, a clone of Video2k.tv that was launched little over a week ago. Alexander Baumgärtner , the alleged owner of the German ‘company’ behind Kinoo.to told TorrentFreak at the time that they had acquired the Kino.to domain name for 1.5 million euros.

“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,” we were told.

This new ‘successor’ Kinoo.to is also linked to Tim C in the German prees, and the site was pulled offline at the time of the arrest this weekend.

With the arrest this weekend the authorities have arrested all the suspects in the Kino.to investigation, but that doesn’t mean that the ‘problem’ has been solved completely. Other Kino.to successors such as Kinox.to are still online, and growing rapidly.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

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….

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Following the event the Kino.to site displayed notices which stated that the site had been “closed on suspicion of forming a criminal organization to commit professional copyright infringement.” While noting that several operators of the site had been arrested, it also criticized the site’s users.

“Internet users who illegally pirated or distributed copies of films may be subjected to a criminal prosecution,” read the warning.

But were the site’s users all criminals hell-bent on destroying the movie industry? According to a report from Telepolis, a recent study found the reverse was true.

The study, which was carried out by Society for Consumer Research (GfK), found that users of pirate sites including Kino.to did not fit the copyright lobby-painted stereotype of parasites who take and never give back.

In fact, the study also found that Internet users treat these services as a preview, a kind of “try before you buy.”

This, the survey claims, leads pirate site users to buy more DVDs, visit the cinema more often and on average spend more than their ‘honest’ counterparts at the box office.

“The users often buy a ticket to the expensive weekend-days,” the report notes.

In the past similar studies have revealed that the same is true for music. People who pirate a lot of music buy significantly more music than those who don’t.

Obviously it would be of great interest to see the report in full, but it appears that is not going to be possible. According to an anonymous GfK source quoted by Telepolis, the findings of the study proved so unpleasant to the company that commissioned the survey that it has now been locked away “in the poison cupboard.”

GfK says it has a policy of not revealing who they conduct research for if their clients don’t want to be exposed. However, they do carry out research for the movie industry. Telepolis go a stage further and call that work “lobbying”.

The GfK source says that the study shows “If you download films, you have an increased interest in the cinema”, which only highlights how stupid it would be for the authorities to carry out their implied threat of prosecuting Kino.to users.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

One of the file-hosting sites that suffered due to the raids was Duckload.com. The cyberlocker site lost 400 servers, worth more than 2 million dollars in total. In addition, the police also went after one of the admins of Duckload.com for his involvement in the site. However, despite being struck hard the site is not planning to quit their business anytime soon.

Instead of lying low, the people behind the site quickly redirected the Duckload.com domain to Video2k.tv, a site that is probably an even bigger threat to the entertainment industry. While Duckload was merely a file-hosting service, the new project is a complete video streaming portal, without ads and free of charge.

“We want to take revenge on the content industry and create the biggest streaming site worldwide. Bigger than any other site has ever been,” one of the admins responsible for the project told TorrentFreak. “We want to provide free movie and TV streams for everyone, everywhere.”

Looking at the traffic the site is on the right path to make this goal a reality. Just a few days after the site went live there are already close to 2 million page views a day, and this number is increasing rapidly. Many users come from German speaking countries, as the site is a direct replacement for the raided Kino.to, but the goal is to conquer the rest of the world as well, TorrentFreak was told.

Looking at the site’s features, it’s no surprise that many people are flocking to the site.

Video2k.tv features the latest movies and TV-shows, all of which can be streamed instantly. The site further offers subtitles and allows users to sort results based on IMDb rating, genre and much more. Combined with a completely ad-free layout, the site will no doubt appeal to a large audience.

This popularity comes at a cost though. The site will not go unnoticed to the various anti-piracy outfits either, which will make it a likely target of future actions by the authorities. However, talking to TorrentFreak, the Video2k.tv admin said that they are more than prepared.

“We have servers in three different locations around the world for now, and the goal is to add two more in the near future. If one place is raided we will switch to a new one,” he said, adding that they also have some 50 domain names in case the current one becomes the target of a seizure.

Without a doubt, Video2k.tv’s determination will be used by the entertainment industry to call for more tools to combat piracy, such as the PROTECT IP Act. Where that will lead and how it will effect the Internet is something that will undoubtedly become clear in the months to come.

Note: At the time of publishing Video2k.tv is dealing with a DDoS attack, causing the site to load slow or not at all.

Thanks Gulli!

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The raids, which involved 250 police and other authorities tackling 42 locations in Germany, Spain, France and the Netherlands, followed an intensive investigation carried out by the Hollywood-backed anti-piracy group GVU.

The main suspect is said to have been detained in Leipzig and another arrestee in Spain. One individual is still at large (possibly the admin of cyberlocker service, unconfirmed) and another has since been released. As of Thursday evening, reports suggested the rest remained in custody.

As we are aware, Kino.to hosted no illegal content, but indexed material and provided links to movies and TV shows stored on file-hosters and other streaming services.

Crucially, those links have to be put there by someone and that task fell to Kino.to’s loose-knit team of link uploaders. In the wake of the site’s demise, one of them has just broken ranks and given an interesting interview on how parts of the site operated.

Speaking under the assumed name John Sandy, the uploader said that he regularly supplied Kino.to with links to documentaries and US TV shows, the most-viewed content on the site.

The links offered by Sandy were submitted to a hidden area of the site and were subsequently moderated, probably for duplicates and quality. Whether this process was carried out by man or machine, Sandy isn’t sure. Successful links went on to make it to the site’s public facing webpage for regular users to access.

Sandy says that he had no contact with the site’s operators and there was no direct financial reward for uploading TV show links to Kino.to. However, Sandy said that there is money in uploading content to file-hosters and he had made around $1,000 per month by generating traffic to these sites.

“I don’t see myself as a criminal,” Sandy explained. “If America can watch these series episodes for free and legally, why should this be not allowed in Germany?”

While GVU and Hollywood won’t be pleased that US TV shows were available via links on Kino.to, it’s fair to say that the addition of hundreds, maybe thousands of movies proved even less popular. The sheer size of the site and its prominence meant that it was just a matter of time before it became a target.

However, while all of the publicity has been focused on the takedown of Kino.to, either by design or huge coincidence at least four German-hosted storage sites – Duckload.com, Frog Movz, Karamba Vidz and Loombo – all suddenly disappeared after the raid.

TorrentFreak is informed that the admin of Duckload was one of the individuals sought by the police and that their operation – which is believed to be around 500 servers – was completely shutdown. Initially the feeling was that Duckload would come back online but the seriousness of the situation appears to be hitting home and now a return seems unlikely, at least at this stage.

Several other hosters in a range of locations are also down. They include archiv.to, quickload.to, tubeload.to and loaded.it. Whether not they were connected to Kino.to, or the indeed the raids, remains to be seen. Another cyberlocker – Freeload.to – was definitely connected since it’s now displaying the same shutdown notice as Kino.to.

But these sites aren’t the only ones connected to the operation which had their services disrupted this week. The website of GVU, the anti-piracy brains behind the Kino.to takedown, was also taken offline following a DDoS attack carried out by Anonymous.

German members of the group put up a video on YouTube describing the attack and according to a translation by Janko Roettgers, they declared the following:

“We believe that running a search engine for videos isn’t illegal… That’s why we immediately reacted by taking down the GVU website… Knowledge is free, and streaming is, too.”

The DDoS attack itself had limited effect and the GVU site is now fully operational, which is more than can be said for Kino.to and several file-hosting services. Nevertheless, rumors of a Kino.to resurrection from an old site backup are circulating. Stranger things have happened but that would be a particularly brave move, especially in Europe.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

This success ended abruptly a few hours ago. The site was pulled offline by a joint police operation involving officers from Germany, Spain, France and the Netherlands. In Germany alone 250 officers assisted in the raids, assisted by 17 computer specialists.

Acting upon a warrant from the General Prosecutor in Dresden, police have arrested a total of 13 people thus far. A 14th person is still being hunted. The arrestees are suspected of involvement in a criminal organization with the purpose of committing professional copyright infringement.

Following the raids Kino.to has been effectively shut down and at the time of writing displays the following message:

“The domain of the site you are trying to access was closed on suspicion of forming a criminal organization to commit professional copyright infringement.”

“Several operators of KINO.TO were arrested.”

“Internet users who illegally pirated or distributed copies of films may be subjected to a criminal prosecution.”

Commenting on the raids the German Federation Against Copyright Theft (GVU) claims that Kino.to made “significant revenue” through a “parasitic business model.” GVU states that Kino.to was working closely with the sites that hosted the copyrighted films, and that they profited from commercial partnerships with these companies.

The Dresden prosecutor confirmed in a press release that Kino.to was making millions of euros in profits.

Although the site was most popular in German-speaking countries, it didn’t escape the eye of the MPAA either. A few months ago the MPAA listed Kino.to as one of the main “notorious markets” in their submission to the U.S. Government.

“This linking site specializes in illegally making available large amounts of copyrighted cinema films and TV series in German and other languages. There are currently over 300,000 infringing TV shows and over 66,000 infringing movies available,” the MPAA wrote at the time.

Last month an Austrian ISP was served with a preliminary injunction forcing it to block subscriber access to Kino.to following complaints from Verein für Anti-Piraterie der österreichischen Film und Videobranche (VAP) – the anti-piracy association of the Austrian film and video industry.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.