Admins of popular movie streaming portal arrested, site shut down

Kino.to, one of the most popular European movie streaming portals, has been shut down following coordinated raids executed by police officers in Germany, France, Spain and the Netherlands.

TorrentFreak reports that the officers raided simultaneously various residential addresses and data centers, and the German police has arrested 13 people connected to the site so far. One managed to avoid getting caught and is currently on the run.

The site is currently down, and for a while it sported a message saying that “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.”

While the site did not actually host any of the illegal content and just served as an index for it, its operators earned millions of Euros by partnering with the sites that actually hosted the copyrighted movies and TV shows.