OiNK’s Bail Date Extended Yet Again by Police
Written by Ernesto on May 02, 2008Over six months have passed since the popular private BitTorrent tracker OiNK was raided in a joint effort by Dutch and British law enforcement. Today, the bail date for OiNK admin Alan Ellis has been extended for the third time, now until the 1st of July.
Cleveland police initially stated that the charges against Alan would be announced December 2007, but this was soon postponed for two months due to a lack of evidence. Interestingly, the police did return OiNK’s servers at the time, after they erased the hard drives. In February the bail date was extended for the second time, only to be extended yet again today.
TorrentFreak contacted Cleveland Police, but we were told that there was was no one available at the press office who could comment on the bail extension. Most likely, they need more time to gather evidence from the computers, laptop and mobile phones they still have in their possession.
OiNK was considered by many to be the finest BitTorrent music tracker the world has ever seen. The site tracked hundreds and thousands of torrents of the finest recordings, from virtually every musical genre. With millions of peers, it was more popular than most public trackers.
Jeremy Banks, Head of the IFPI’s Internet Anti-Piracy Unit described OiNK differently, and said the site was central to the illegal distribution of pre-release music online. “This was not a case of friends sharing music for pleasure. This was a worldwide network that got hold of music they did not own the rights to and posted it online,” he said.
Based on information from IFPI and others, Cleveland police claimed that OiNK was a money machine, and that Alan was making hundreds of thousands of pounds. The people who actually visited OiNK, however, know that the site was free to use. This was backed up by Trent Reznor, the frontman of Nine Inch Nails: “If OiNK cost anything, I would certainly have paid, but there isn’t the equivalent of that in the retail space right now.”
The IFPI and BPI did not only feed the police “misleading” information, they also took over the OiNK.cd domain and displayed an ominous message indicating an investigation into the site’s users had begun. These threats were intended to scare former OiNK members, and they succeeded in this until OiNK reclaimed the domain.
With the third extension in a row, the speculation about potential charges continues. At the moment it remains unclear what evidence the police are trying to find, but I assume they have figured out by now that the site is not as evil as the IFPI and BPI wanted them to believe.
Previously: IFPI to Sue Swedish ISP for Facilitating Copyright Infringement
Next: Warez Leader Is Chairman Of San Diego Republican Party
52 Responses (Add yours or TrackBack)
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The whole system is fucked up. And when it comes to anti-piracy business, it’s 10 times worse.
I guess they just need more time to fabricate evidence or some such.
I hope they realize there was nothing wrong with the site, because none of the files were not hosted at the site.
All the best for Alan!
all old news, once again
They are trying to find a cop to buy or rent as they did with the witness in the Pirate Bay trial
The English police are completely clueless on this sort of thing. They were obviously led into this under false pretences now they have to find something to save face. I wonder how long they intend to keep this charade going for?
Free Alan Ellis!
And to believe that 5 years ago I had faith in the system
In soviet russia, the system has faith in you.
The funny thing about this is, its not the first time when the cops are involved, that they have a hard time actually finding evidence, and proving the bold claims they put out to the press.
The only upside is that no users have been threatened with legal action. In that respect it is a good thing that the servers have been wiped.
I’m sticking to anonymous bit torrent alternatives like Dargens ( http://www.Dargens.com ) torrents but not BT compatible, friend to friend instead.
I am sure the charges against Oink will be dropped before any trial.
Even so sharing in private (I mean only connecting to friends) has its advantages.
heh, hes getting longer than terrorists get so is this a warning that its much worse to have a bit-torrent tracking website than it is to go around blowing things up, killing people and causing havoc?
What was the official justification for erasing the Oink harddrives?
Does anyone know?
they probably couldnt brake the cryptic system of it so they deleted it to hide evidence to their stupidity.
piracy is when you sell things that you dont own.
this is sharing. you dont pay anyone to download some music. i downloaded guns&roses music, pink floyd, billy joel, eric clapton… i dont have money for originals, so thank you all for sharing it for me. as for situation right now, if i ever get some money, i will personally give it to artists, nothing to those bloodsuckers that call themself music industry. i recommend to all, listen 2 songs from pink floyd: Welcome to the machine, and Have a cigare. roger waters said it right so many years ago. why does not ppl get it already? :(
fact is that by taking OiNK down.. 2 new big sites came up. they get the opposite of what they want.
they can take down a site or falsely arrest people but they can’t bring down the community that’s spread all over the world.
p2p sharing is a part of most people’s life now. the industry has no other choice than to think of a fair alternative. the person to come up and develop it will be very rich.
It’s amazing that they can keep expending this as long as they please. This is the third extension… obviously they can’t find anything that sticks. Let the kid go on with his life already.
tbh its so odd that they even have him in jail?! for what? being an admin/owner of a torrent site? what damage can he possible do outside of jail?? i wonder what proof they have to keep him in jail with murders and rapists etc.
@ 15
duuhh hes not in jail, hes out on bail and its been extended, thats what this artical is all about!!
lmao
@16
His bail date has been extended. I would take that to mean he is in jail waiting to go before a judge and have his bail set. If they had said his bail has been extended I would take that to mean he is out and waiting trial.
If you have info one way or the other than share. If not you are as in the dark as anyone else who reads this poorly put together article.
I think they erased the Hard Drives cause they probably contained info about the fact that even policemen and other “evil” persons where amongst the members …
@17
You obviously dont know anything about the case, so why make such dumb comments ?
they’ve got nothing on him, what evidence is another extension going to yield that months of investigation hasn’t already. I bet they booted his comps a handful of times, were bewildered by the technical information and annoyed by the lack of evidence, and shut them down. They’ve been collecting dust for months.
[quote comment="369373"]@16
His bail date has been extended. I would take that to mean he is in jail waiting to go before a judge and have his bail set.[/quote]
No, he’s not in jail. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bail#Bail_law_in_England_and_Wales
OiNK admin Alan Ellis will probably end up like Christian Reisen (Simon Moon) who had to wait 3 years between his arrest in 2004 (and the shutdown of ShareReactor.com) and the eventual trial date. Although it became evident that the authorities had no grounds to charge him with any serious crime for simply running an index site, the bust accomplished its primary purpose. The internet’s biggest edonkey link site was shut down and remained shut down.
ShareConnector, which rose up after the ShareReactor bust, was also a victim of a police raid later that same year. Although they also ended up eventually beating the charges, the website never recovered when it finally went back online after a multi-year layoff. ShareConnector soon closed again upon being hit with a lawsuit, by then having lost the will to fight.
The OiNK case may well turn out similar. With a good lawyer, Alan Ellis could likely get off with a slap on the wrist, but after that ordeal, it’s unlikely he’d be eager to re-start OiNK back up again, by which time he’ll likely be broke and exhausted.
That’s how the system works.
Please OiNK back… Don’t want this scum, junky and shitty sites like waffles.fm and shit.cd…
this is “A” usa gov behavior. lie cheat and steel to legitimize their harassment of individuals… i know i have been threw it. i dont think the true criminals are as bad as the gov itself!!!
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