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.

Comments

Spin

[OverlordQ]

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.

Re:Spin

[OverlordQ]

Making 500k for helping other people share material under copyright? Yea, jealous of the sum, but not of the method, shows a lot about his ethics.