Kino.to Founder Dirk B. Jailed, Gives Up $5 Million in File-Sharing Profits

7:58 AM PDT 6/14/2012 by Scott Roxborough

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The 39-year-old behind Germany’s biggest piracy site received a reduced sentence after making a full confession.

COLOGNE, Germany – Dirk B, the founder of illegal file-sharing site kino.to has received a four and a half year prison sentence and must relinquish up to $5 million (€3.7 million) in profits he made operating what was once Germany’s largest source of copyright protected films and TV series.

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While not nearly as famous as fellow German, Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom, the 39-year-old Dirk B. is the biggest catch yet in the crackdown by German authorities on copyright theft. Before European police shut down kino.to in a coordinated raid last year, the site hosted links to some 135,000 copyright-protected films and TV series and had up to 4 million users a day.

The court gave Dirk B. a reduced sentence after he made a full confession and expressed “extreme regret” for the damage caused by kino.to.

According to the court, Dirk B. earned a total of $8.2 million (€6.6 million) from the site, much of it through advertising. In exchange for his confession, and for agreeing to give up his remaining wealth, the court gave Dirk B. a reduced sentence. His crimes could have carried a maximum 15 year prison sentence.