Music file-sharer 'Oink' cleared of fraud

 

A man who ran a music-sharing website with almost 200,000 members has been found not guilty of conspiracy to defraud at Teesside Crown Court.

 

Alan Ellis, 26, was the first person in the UK to be prosecuted for illegal file-sharing.

 

He operated the site, called Oink, from his flat in Middlesbrough from 2004 until it was closed down in a police raid in October 2007.

 

In that time Oink facilitated the download of 21 million music files.

 

Bank accounts

 

The site allowed active members to find other people on the web who were prepared to share files - enabling users to get hold of free music.

 

Users were asked to make a donation, although it was not necessary for them to do so to invite friends to join the site.

 

The jury was told that police found almost US $300,000 in Mr Ellis's Paypal account and that he received $18,000 (£11,000) a month in donations from people using his website.

 

Mr Ellis told the court there was no intention to defraud copyright holders.

 

He said the donations were to pay for the server's rental and any "surplus" would eventually be used to buy a server.

 

He agreed he had about 10 bank accounts with some £20,000 in savings when police raided the house he shared.

 

Moved to Amsterdam

 

Giving evidence, Mr Ellis explained why he set up the website.

 

"It was to further my skills. To better my skills for employability."

 

Mr Ellis said the website was developed from a free template, which had a torrent file-sharing facility included in it.

 

Oink did not host any music itself, it indexed the files users had available on their computers for others to download.

 

Originally the site was hosted on his home computer, but by 2007 it had moved to a commercial server in Amsterdam because of the amount of internet traffic it was attracting.

 

Mr Ellis, who had a full-time job as a software engineer, was born in Leeds and grew up in south Manchester, studying A-levels in Cheadle.

 

He declined to speak as he left the court.

 

Sources:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/tees/8461879.stm

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/01/oink-admin-beats-file-sharing-charges/

 

For the file sharing sites, I suppose it serves as good news and a decent start of the year. Not sure if it could be used as a future precedent in some cases for future filesharing trials in the UK who accept donations.

Good?

This was a private torrent site, and therefore I never used it. It was huge for music back in the day though. I'm glad I didn't use it because there were rumors that the memberlist and IP logs were gained in the raid.

Rather glad to see the outcome. Don't see why they tried to point out the $300,00USD in his bank account as evidence. The case was whether or not he was conspiring to defraud the music industry. The fact that the money is still in the PayPal account and not withdrawn into a private bank account shows that he wasn't using the donations for his own uses.

Rather glad to see the outcome. Don't see why they tried to point out the $300,00USD in his bank account as evidence. The case was whether or not he was conspiring to defraud the music industry. The fact that the money is still in the PayPal account and not withdrawn into a private bank account shows that he wasn't using the donations for his own uses.

 

I'm sure it is safe to assume that they were trying to prove that he profited from his site. I'm sure the claim was he was selling music that was not legally his for profit.

Dragnfly, whats wrong with music sharing?

 

 

I mean c'mon, like these people don't make enough money? I understand hypothetically that the big down loaders are stealing, but people like me who only download from torrent sites etc. maybe 5-6 times a month for maybe about 4 songs each, really doesn't make that big in a dent.

 

 

I really do think its a law, to bring in revenue for the state.