Music file-sharer 'Oink' cleared of fraud

Music file-sharer 'Oink' cleared of fraud
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/tees/8461879.stm

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 2007.

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

The site allowed active members to find other people on the web who were prepared to share files.

Users were required to make a donation to be able to invite friends to join the site.

During the trial, which lasted seven days, it was heard that Mr Ellis received $18,000 (£11,000) a month in donations from people using his website.

Months after getting his degree he had saved £20,000 despite only just starting his software engineer job.

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

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Not like the media to spin lies to spread their shite, is it?

Users didn't have to donate a thing, and any donations that were sent weren't for access to the site or the abilty to invite friends, as the article suggests, it went towards server costs, not Mr Ellis' back pocket. On a site with more than 200,000 users, and over 500,000 torrents for download, server costs are huge. The site wouldn't have survived without them, and thousands of people, me included, wouldn't listen to half of the music that we do otherwise. I've probably spent about £3k more on music than I would have if I didn't have an account at OiNK and, subsequently, other torrent sites.

Anyway, I'm glad the courts seen sense and the guy's been let go.

HOORAY. As he did do fuck all wrong.
This didn't go the way of most file sharing cases as of late, where lack of knowledge of the protocol = guilt. The BBC didn't cover this that well at all.

Just for the sake of truth, he wasn't a file sharer per se, he was the admin of the tracker.

http://torrentfreak.com/oink-admin-found-not-guilty-walks-free-100115/