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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.
The cost of the hardware is hardly worth mentioning... this little enterprise is about bandwidth. A few grand a month can easily be spent on just a T1.
You do understand that bittorrent tracker itself doesn't burn bandwidth almost at all, but its extremely heavy on the server because so many hits are coming in all the time?
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
Depends. Does the UK have civil asset forfeiture?
Yes, the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. Drug trafficking, arms dealing, people trafficking, money laundering... is grounds for forfeiture of assets. As is "making an illicit recording", "possessing an article designed for making a copy of a copyright work".
All I do is really like Google, to really provide a connection between people. None of the music is on my website.
I was a member of Oink. I loved the site and was upset when it got shut down.
Nevertheless, this quote is bunk. It was nothing like Google. It was an exclusive piracy club. He provided an invitation-only portal for members to illegally trade copyrighted material.
Again, I loved the site, but I had no illusions about what it was, and what I was using it for.
It was a private BitTorrent tracker. The torrent files (containing the hashes) were generated by users and uploaded to the site. OiNK tracked the torrents and provided search for its torrents.
I was a member of Oink. It was a private, invitation only site. It mostly consisted of a large message board where people could post links to stuff they were sharing, or file "wish lists" of stuff they were looking for. If you wanted to boost your ratio, you'd hit these wish lists and try to fill them. Was a nice site, and left a hole when it was taken down.
If you read the article, you'd see that the music industry apparently made use of the site to distribute and promote material as well.
Yeah, I pirate a lot of stuff. I'd also wager that I own more legal CDs, DVDs and Blu-Ray discs than the average person, so I think it balances out. I mostly use pirated stuff to "taste test" new material on my terms (it can take a couple of listens to an entire album sometimes to grow an appreciation of the material). I'm also super picky about quality, so I rarely keep the pirated material "as is" - if it's good and I like it, I seek out and buy the genuine article.
But that's me. I'm glad the Oink guy didn't get pounded into the ground. It was a nice service that I gladly donated to. No regrets.
Doesn't UK law have anything along the lines of conspiracy to facilitate copyright infringement?
No. Conspiracy to commit a crime is itself a crime but conspiracy to commit a tort is legally just gibberish.
"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.
Doesn't UK law have anything along the lines of conspiracy to facilitate copyright infringement?
The point of the case was, in the UK, as it currently stands, there are no laws against "making available"; which means the copyright holders that wanted the police to go after him ALREADY knew what the site was doing, at least in law, was all above board.
So instead, they urged the police to go another route and linked the donations recieved to the actual downloads themselves and tried to argue the case he was selling the music.