OiNK’s Bail Date Extended for the 4th Time
Written by Ernesto on June 27, 2008During October 2007, the popular BitTorrent tracker OiNK was shut down in a joint effort by Dutch and British law enforcement. Today, the bail date for OiNK admin Alan Ellis has been extended for a fourth time, now until the 28th of July.
Cleveland police initially stated that the charges against Alan would be announced December 2007, but this was soon postponed for two months, only to be postponed again this May. The police did return OiNK’s servers however, but not before they had erased the hard drives.
Today, Alan Ellis was told that his bail date has been extended once gain. Alan told TorrentFreak that the new date has been set for July 28th, an extension of four weeks. As usual, no explanation was given for the delay.
However, the case got a little bit more complicated, after the arrests of six OiNK uploaders in the UK last month. These users, five men and one woman, were arrested under suspicion of “Conspiracy to Defraud the Music Industry”, and taken to their local police station for questioning and required to provide DNA samples and fingerprinting.
In addition, TorrentFreak has received information that an OiNK user from Norway was questioned by the KRIPOS (Norwegian Cybercrime Unit) for his involvement with the BitTorrent tracker. Apart from this single user, there hasn’t been any legal action outside the UK.
At this point, we can only speculate whether the arrests of the users will be used in the case of OiNK admin Alan Ellis, or vice versa. One thing is clear now, the bail date for both Alan and the OiNK users – as we reported yesterday – has been extended till July 28.
With today’s extension, the speculation about potential charges continues. At the moment it remains unclear what evidence the police are trying to find. However, I might assume that they now realize that the initial allegations that the tracker was an organized crime cartel, making hundreds and thousands of pounds, are not true.
Previously: Malaysian Government Orders Torrent Sites Shutdown
Next: Portugal Hands Jail Sentence to First Convicted File-Sharer
43 Responses
“they now realize that the initial allegations … are not true”
I kind of doubt it.
This is ridiculous… this is like when we had those adverts claiming… Illegal copies of movies being sold on the street helps fund terroist or something…
Lets see what the police can pull out of their asses with the extra month they have…
legally how many times can they extend the date?
As a practicising UK criminal lawyer I’m almost certain that these guys won’t be prosecuted.
Whats happening is an abuse of process designed to strike fear into P2P Bittorrent Users.
They will keep bailing the person as many times as possible. What it needs is a decent solicitor to fight the bail.
Yet again, the copyright lobbies have lied and conspired to get persons prosecuted for crimes they haven’t committed. (Especially in regards to Proceeds of Crime – there were no Profits.)
@1 wtf there not true though.
alan did’nt run some major underground pirate ring making loads of money, i really hope that the police properly investigate this and get to the truth. which is, that alan is not guilty of copyright infringement or running a crime ring making loads of money all he did was make a site so people could share their music, its up to the user if they put copyrighted or none copyrighted content on the site which is not alans problem.
on any point is’nt this a civil case rather than a criminal case?,
@5
What methods and arguments can you use to fight bail?
I second the question from #7.
Also, does anyone think that the bail being extended til the same date means that the police wants to deal with these cases together (maybe somehow merge them into 1 case, to let them mentally harass those innocent people for longer) ?
“Whats happening is an abuse of process designed to strike fear into P2P Bittorrent Users.”
Yeah, we are shaking in our boots… LOL!
When will they learn?
Let’s see how many times is the bail going to be extended.
I’m placing my bet that it will be no case eventually.
I guarantee that these cases will either be dropped or reduced to some charge equivalent to a slap on the wrist.
Wrongful prosecution. Wrongful prosecution. Wrongful prosecution.
@11 – there is no prosecution yet.
@13 – Wrongful imprisonment?
I dont understand. Is it leagal to erase a harddrive on a conficated computer, when they probaly not going to charge them?
@14
Nobody has been imprisoned, either…
Wow, so, when is the release order due??
Still wondering about what US former users will face…
Still wondering about what U.S. former users will face…
@18/19:
Nothing
If I were running a torrent site, I’d be sure to keep offsite backups.
Of course, I’m paranoid enough to keep two nightly, on-site rsync backups of my home computer, I’m considering switching to Dirvish or rdiff-backup to get multi-checkpoint rollback, and since the backup is only 3-4GiB, I’m considering paying rsync.net for offsite storage at some point in the future.
Bail is only for murders,rapists,corporate criminal etc. Allowing people who uploaded stuff onto the internet to have the same rights other criminals have is just not an option.
Who needs trials or laws to hold people, just send them downloaders to gitmo and throw away the keys.
Crystal Ball:
5/17/15:
As Torrenfreak reported yesterday, Alan Ellis’ bail has been extended a 49th time.
@23 – true as as can be. And as people have stated, this is only going to crash, and be buried with the past of the soon-to-be music industry fail.
is Alan needing to pay a lawyer evertime the bail is extended? they could just be trying to drain him of any cash…
Seeing this makes me appreciate my right to a speedy trial.
@26
in this case you would not want a speedy trial. In a lot of cases you want it to drag on for a long time so the prosecutors get tired and possibly drop the case.
Gotta love the land of the free, where the citizens are controlled by their televisions or too busy swinging their fat baggy arms to Wii and masturbating with their cell phones to work together for change.
Non violent pot smokers and growers and file sharers get sent to pound me in the ass prison with dangerous criminals where they may receive a deadly disease or be outright murdered, while traded around like a pack of smokes.
“Well don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time” say the people who are part of the problem. No, the answer is to END these laws against non violent file sharers and plants like marijuana and magic mushrooms.
Read FOOD OF THE GODS by terence mckenna!
Stop being brainwashed! Work together and repeal unjust laws!
We need to work together or we lose!
Imagine if the people in the star trek series had klingon MPAA and RIAA, they would be sent to a place to be buttfucked for using replicators!
The original false charges of conspiracy to defraud the music industry, a crime I’ve never heard of, could not be used because its highly unlikely that any profits were made.
If they are non-profit it compares with boycotting, which we all should personally do.
Let’s see. Shall I pay $40 for one lousey CD to the big 4 cartels, or download it to try? Hard choice. What about 5 bucks? Still a tough choice. $1? Only if from a non-affiliated recording label
@5 – Jack Thomas or anyone else familiar with UK law…
Is there any kind of limit on the number of times a person can have their bail “extended”? This is getting ridiculous. Either charge him or let him go.
Hm… HÃ¥per ikke det blir sÃ¥ veldig mange fler fra Norge…
anyone want an invite to scenetorrents.org
The uploaders are suspected of
“Conspiracy to Defraud the Music Industry”.
Right, because the music industry has a god-given right to a certain amount of income for every song anyone ever hears..
@31 ScT
If you have any to spare I would very much appreciate one.
My email: jadedchimp [at] gmail [dot] com
I’m no civil rights expert or anything, and I know GW has pretty much flushed the Constitution, but can they keep arbitrarily extending bail dates like that? Kinda sounds like an end-run around double jeopardy.. instead of trying and messing up, just hold them indefinitely until they do find something?
@ 32
Don’t give out invites to strangers on public forums, you dick head.
You are not kidding dude, this is way beyond ridiculous! Absurd is more like it!
http://www.Privacy-center.net
If the police don’t prosecute, would IFPI/BPI be able to use evidence gathered by the police in a civil case against him?
@35 – if by GW you mean George W Bush, and if by “the constitution” you mean the constitution of the united states of America, then you have the wrong country.
Alan Ellis is a UK citizen living in the UK.
“They will keep bailing the person as many times as possible. What it needs is a decent solicitor to fight the bail.”
Then this would be a to time for Trent Reznor or other P2P supporters to back Alan up. This would show them. Good publicity too.
Hello! If users in the US have been arrested it will not appear on any news paper. I have seen this happen before and the US are very clever at keeping the media in the dark or gagged. You will only find out when the extradition request comes in.
Extradition? For bittorrent?
And again…
“Police bail for Alan Ellis has been extended. The new date is 10 September 2008″ (Information found on Oink.cd)
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