DRESDEN, Germany — Authorities have arrested who they say is the final suspect wanted in connection with last summer’s raids on file-sharing site Kino.to.
In addition to Kino.to, which hosted links to German versions of thousands of copyright protected videos, the raids also affected several file-hosting sites including Duckload.com and Video2k.tv, a video streaming portal that was launched after the raids, TorrentFreak.com reported.
Authorities say that the suspect, who was nabbed in Delmenhorst, Germany, was the operator of Duckload.com and also was connected with Kinoo.to, a clone of Video2k.tv, which was launched more than a week ago, but has been offline since the arrest.
After the raids on their servers in June, the operators redirected the Duckload.com domain to Video2k.tv without ads and free of charge.
Kino.to, which indexed material stored on file hosting services, had 4 million visitors a day and was among the 100 most-visited websites in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, countries where German is spoken.
Police have been unable to take down the site because its domain lay in the African country of Togo and outside European jurisdiction; however, prosecutors brought the charges local and arrested 13 people on charges of involvement in a criminal organization with the purpose of committing professional copyright infringement.