AfterDawn: News

OiNK admin cleared of charge

Alan Ellis, the former admin of the giant private torrent tracker OiNK, has been found not guilty on the charge of conspiracy to defraud, and will walk free.

At its peak, the indexing site had 200,000 members which had shared over 21 million music files.



The prosecutors had claimed that Ellis was receiving £11,000 a month in donations, and that there was $300,000 USD in Ellis' PayPal account. They did not mention that donations went towards paying the servers and hosting fees of the popular site. Ellis says any "surplus" from a monthly donation eventually went towards buying a new server. Ellis did admit, however, that he had £20,000 in savings when the police raided his home.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 15 Jan 2010 15:46

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• 7 comments

• ZippyDSM

  Nice one! But sooner or alter the rules will change and catch them regardless ><

  15.1.2010 16:10 #1

• av_verbal

  Originally posted by ZippyDSM: Nice one! But sooner or alter the rules will change and catch them regardless ><he was cleared in the criminal courts of conspiracy to defraud a jumped up charge to enable the BPI (sony, emi, warner, universal)in the future to prosecute without having to fund civil cases.
  
  all that will happen is the case will be taken through the civil courts as it rightly should be not wasting either the polices & criminal courts time or tax payers monies.
  
  the civil litigation fees is what the media industry is desperately trying to avoid and i suspect there will be global rules that copywrite infringement must be policed & paid for by the tax payer in the secret ACTA treaty that is being drawn up by the media cartels with civil groups being denied access.
  
  it will go like this, USA says "hey little country, you WILL enforce our global laws or we will cancel WTO & IMF support so you will starve to death".
  
  US to Costa Rica: you want sugar markets? We want maximal copyright
  Quote:Michael Geist sez, "Reports from Costa Rica indicate that final approval of the Central American Free Trade Agreement with the United States is languishing in the Legislative Assembly due to concerns over the copyright provisions. The CAFTA copyright provisions are similar to those found in the other major U.S. trade agreements concluded in recent years: DMCA-style protections, ISP liability, and copyright term extension are all part of the package.Secret copyright treaty debated in DC: must-see video

  15.1.2010 16:36 #2

• jone103

  im the worst spammer in the history of AD, I can't figure out links :/

  15.1.2010 21:38 #3

• KillerBug

  These media cartels have gotten out of hand...I almost feel obligated to pirate media, just to avoide giving these criminals any more money.
  

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  16.1.2010 00:54 #4

• bluedogs

  Nice, man are they gunna be peeved over this. They are gunna chase this guy to the ends of the earth to get him I reckon. It's about time a court seen these lots for exactly what they are time wasters and cryers.

  16.1.2010 15:04 #5

• ST2006

  Shame. Just Shame.

  21.1.2010 16:19 #6

• av_verbal

  Originally posted by ST2006: Shame. Just Shame.not really as the media industry are now going to have to fund a civil case and not waste tax payers monies on a jumped up charge.
  
  i'm guessing that soon the law will be changed though and the cases will be using the public purse for litigation.
  
  if this does happen it will be a very sad day as the media industry would have convinced our governments that what essentially is a civil matter is now a criminal offence purely for them to avoid the court costs.

  22.1.2010 04:58 #7