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In UK, Oink Admin Cleared of Fraud
krou writes "The BBC is reporting that Alan Ellis, who ran music file sharing site Oink from his flat in the UK, has been found not guilty of conspiracy to defraud. Between 2004 and 2007, the site 'facilitated the download of 21 million music files' by allowing its some 200,000 'members to find other people on the web who were prepared to share files.' Ellis was making £18,000 a month ($34,600) from donations from users, and claimed that he had no intention of defrauding copyright holders, and said 'All I do is really like Google, to really provide a connection between people. None of the music is on my website.'" Reader Andorin recommends Torrentfreak's coverage, which includes summaries of the closing arguments.
wish i had thought of it
34k a month? I dont feel sorry they went after him.
When police raided his terraced home in October 2007, they found almost 300,000 dollars in his accounts and the site had 200,000 members, who had downloaded 21 million files.
Mr Ellis said the money was used to pay for the server's rental and any "surplus" was intended to eventually buy a server.
I'm calling shenanigans on that too. $300k would buy some pretty nice servers, much less a server.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
The big question is...
Now that he has been found innocent, does he get his 300k back?
Or am I mistaken in assuming that his assets were seized?
Not a bad 'donation density' really. It just shows the massive economies of scale possible on the internet.
This is a substitute for a clever sig that fits within the maximum number of characters.
And you know how the government hates enablers.
A car analogy:
His website was like a GPS, handy, but can still head you in the wrong direction.
An illegal drug analogy:
His website was like marijuana, it was a gateway to more nefarious things.
(Warning, the above was sarcasm)
Sent from your iPad.
I do not know exactly how oink works (worked?), but from the quote
All I do is really like Google, to really provide a connection between people. None of the music is on my website.
Wouldn't that make exactly the same defence valid for Pirate Bay and other torrent sites?
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
In the twilight, unknown"
Pretty sure when I quoted the article originally it said £18,000, but it's now saying $18,000, which is £11,000.
'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
the waffles have been great but i hope this gets us back to bacon.
Whats the point of law if not to pay courts? If we just leave out the legal action, we're left with less disbursement of cash and tunes. Its the new radio payola scheme.
Capitalist pig.
Karma fed to this user will be promptly burnt. Be warned; be wary.
"Conspiracy to defraud"
Defrauding seems a bit of an odd charge to lay for this. It suggests that he was taking wealth from the record industry for direct personal gain.
The money cam from subscribers. They were not making any money from the file sharing. Even if he had a website that was explicitly dedicated to getting people in contact to fence actually stolen property I'd have thought this would be hard to make stick.
Doesn't UK law have anything along the lines of conspiracy to facilitate copyright infringement?
Nice to hear a sensible decision on this matter in UK courts, not completely bought by money/power of certain big businesses yet unlike elsewhere.
The record companies still don't get that I would pay a decent monthly fee for the legal equivalent of something as well organized as Oink was with the same quality control on the files... Not that I have to anyways but I would.
You forget, States are full of politicians, many with ambitions to go Federal. I doubt the State government would overrule the Federal, unless they were committing political suicide (in which case, you'd see the first Honest politician in recorded history).
Besides, you have to Think of the Children (tm)!
>>>I doubt the State government would overrule the Federal
It's happened in the past. In the early 1800s the Northern States refused to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act, effectively nullifying Congressional law. More recently states are ignoring the U.S. prohibition on marijuana and making it legal for use by doctors (via prescription).
I think giving States the power to declare laws "unconstitutional" would effectively shackle Washington, and keep them from doing idiotic, tyrannical stuff (like fining me $2500 for not joining an HMO). Checks and balances on power. Just like we learned in school.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
At last we can be proud of someone from the UK doing something right. Well done MF.
"In the criminal law, a conspiracy is an agreement between two or more persons to break the law at some time in the future, and, in some cases, with at least one overt act in furtherance of that agreement." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_(crime)
So how come one person was charged, who was he meant to be conspiring with and why were they not charged as well?
His logic is that he's like good is utter shit. For starters Google doesn't require an invite and secondly Google can find numerous things and its sole purpose isn't to share copyright material.
You're right about Pirate Bay and in fact Pirate Bay was more like Google seeing how it wasn't invite only and one could easily stumble across freely rather than having to actively seek to share copyright material.
Actually I think the people donating were supposed to be the victims, he was claiming to need money to keep the service going, but in reality had a decent flow going.
Personally, I don't think this was fraud unless he was stating that he needed the money to keep the service going when in fact he did not, but then again, I am not paid by the recording industries.
It was the best site on the internet before it was taken down. You could find anything on oink, no matter how old or unpopular it was..
The guy had $300,000 stashed in an account he figured the police would not find when they went searching - I mean, who the hell keeps $300,000 in their Paypal account unless it's to avoid it being noticed when his bank records are requested. Last time I provisioned a web server in the UK it was only about £1500 and it seems to have not changed. A two unit server would most likely handle his website, since I don't believe he was even running the trackers, just a basic site to point people to the torrents. So $300,000 is enough to buy over 100 servers! All of his hosting, domain registration, and hardware costs were ALREADY COVERED by the donations - the $300,000 was surplus to requirements. There is no doubt in my mind he was just going to suck as much cash as he could out of people and then squirrel the money away in the Caymen Islands. They should now trial him for defrauding the public of donations.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
OiNK was an awesome place, great community of great people. Donations were 100% voluntary, in fact I never donated much other than my time. I seriously doubt the money found in his bank account was personal profits, etc. I truly believe that the majority of it would have been reinvested into the site had the initial raid not taken place.
A judge that has common sense and knows that when you provide a client that lets you communicate with someone else ....you don't like piracy , then create something non piratable..instead of trying to hold everybody else but yourself accountable for your failed product.
in form of data, it is no different then trying to say alexander graham bell is responsible for all conversations made using his phone.
Seriously, figure out a better drm system and stop trying to hammer the little guy