Peter Makepeace, prosecuting, naturally painted an extremely negative picture, labeling the Pink Palace as a place designed from the ground up as a personal money-making machine for Ellis.

“21 million downloads. 600,000-plus albums. £300,000. This was a cash cow, it was perfectly designed to profit him and it was as dishonest as the day is long,” said Makepeace.

It is common sense to come to the conclusion that Oink was dishonest, claimed the prosecution lawyer, adding that Ellis knows that it’s dishonest “to promote, encourage and facilitate criminal activity,” and accusing him of telling the jury “persistent, cunning, calculated lies.”

It would, of course, be dishonest to promote “criminal activity”, but Mr Makepeace should be very well aware that the activity engaged in by OiNK’s users is covered under civil law.

Switching momentarily from criticism to praise and then back again, Makepeace said that the OiNK website was a “wonderful machine” for sharing music but noted that while the site had a really good brand name, it was a brand synonymous with “ripping off music.”

University of London professor Birgitte Andersenok gave evidence earlier in the trial, stating that file-sharing didn’t hurt the music industry and led to more sales. Mr Makepeace trashed her evidence.

“It’s nonsense, it’s flannel, it’s verbiage, it’s garbage,” he told the Court.

For the defense, Alex Stein said that Ellis had never knowingly acted dishonestly and that in 2004 when OiNK was launched, it was a “brave new world” on the Internet.

“In many societies he’d be an innovator, a creator, a Richard Branson. His talent would be moulded, not crushed by some sort of media organization,” he said.

The media organization being referred to by Stein was the IFPI, who he said had never requested that OiNK be shut down, and had instead “sat and watched.”

Gazette Live reports that Stein went on to launch a scathing attack on the IFPI.

“They used this site. Their own members used this site to promote their own music and now they’re crushing him. Maybe he grew too big for them, maybe they’ve taken a different marketing approach. I don’t know. But it was decided that this site should be taken down.

“All of us here are being manipulated to some sort of marketing strategy by the IFPI. If anybody’s acting dishonestly it’s them,” he said.

At the end of the two week trial the jury returned a unanimous verdict (12 to 0). Alan Ellis is not guilty of Conspiracy to Defraud the music industry. He walked out of Teesside Crown Court a free man today, his name cleared.

The verdict cannot be appealed and Ellis can finally put the past behind him and move on.

Breaking story…

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Yesterday Ellis stated that he had initially hosted the tracker in his bedroom while studying at Teesside University, and used the coding experience to develop his skills in order to bring future employment possibilities.

Today more details became available, which appear to show that Ellis believed that he operated his site within the law.

While it’s impossible to say what goes on inside another person’s head, when it comes to the law the average BitTorrent site admin or keen BitTorrent user will be mostly tuned into the requirements of copyright and violations of copyright law. In basic terms relating to this case, the unauthorized copying and/or distribution of copyright works, both illegal under UK copyright law.

BitTorrent trackers such as OiNK do not distribute, store or duplicate copyright works, so when Ellis said yesterday that he viewed what he did as similar to how the post office or telephone company operates, i.e directing other people’s data (illegal or not), he clearly believes that type of operation is permissible under copyright law. Indeed, unlike in other jurisdictions, there is no offense of ‘facilitation’ under UK copyright law.

“I didn’t think the site was abusing the copyrights,” he said, and in the above context he was right. But if OiNK wasn’t abusing copyrights, that responsibility must fall elsewhere – at the feet of the site’s members.

“If these people chose to download music and in doing so were breaking the law, then that was their responsibility, not mine,” Ellis told the Court. “I never saw that I was responsible for them downloading music.”

While Ellis can’t be held responsible for what others do on his site, he was candid when it came to admitting that he made use of some of the material indexed by the tracker. Ellis told the Court that he spent a lot of money buying music, but had used file-sharing as a mechanism to discover new artists.

“From my experience if I download music and I like it, I would go out and buy it. I understood most people to have that view,” he explained.

According to Gazette Live, Ellis also told the Court that he responded “out of good will” to takedown requests received from the infamous Web Sheriff anti-piracy company on behalf of rights holders.

So, if OiNK didn’t break copyright law by not transferring, copying or storing copyright works, and there is no offense of facilitation of the same under UK law, why was the site shut down and why is this trial taking place?

Maybe because the BPI and IFPI knew that copyright infringement charges wouldn’t stick, they instead guided the police down another route, that of Conspiracy to Defraud.

Ellis denies that charge and the case continues.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

From the very beginning, the music industry has pictured the site’s founder as someone who charges users for access to the site, claiming that it was set up to make profits from infringing on the rights of the major record labels.

Its users were criminals who conspired to steal from the music industry for reasons other than the enjoyment of music, music industry groups claimed. “This was not a case of friends sharing music for pleasure,” Jeremy Banks of the IFPI said shortly after the site fell, insinuating that profits were made behind the scenes.

Last week the prosecution in the OiNK trial continued down the same path, pointing out that Ellis had gathered nearly $300,000 from voluntary donations over the years. They made it seem like Ellis was running a profitable business but failed to mention that a large chunk of this money was continuously invested back into the site and its running costs.

No proof was provided that Ellis used any of the donation money to enrich himself. He had the equivalent of $32,500 in several savings accounts at the time of his arrest. Ellis planned to use this money to buy servers for the tracker.

This week Ellis has the chance to start telling the Court his side of the story, and has been detailing how he initially hosted the tracker in his own bedroom when he was studying at Teesside University.

Ellis explained how OiNK began as a pet project with the sole purpose of improving his “outdated” UK honours degree in software engineering. “I didn’t have an intention, I was furthering my skills as a programmer, as a software engineer,” Ellis told Teesside Crown Court today.

Ellis, who was working on the backend of the site to make sure that everything kept running, was merely providing a platform for OiNK’s users to share whatever they wanted. He denied the charges of conspiracy to defraud the music industry.

The case continues.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The private site tracked hundreds and thousands of torrents linking to the finest recordings from virtually every musical genre. With millions of peers, it was more popular than many public trackers.

The site was shut down in a joint effort by Dutch and British law enforcement in October 2007, based on intel provided by two music industry lobby organizations, the IFPI and the BPI. The police arrested Alan Ellis, the founder of the site, and months later several uploaders were arrested as well.

Four of the uploaders pleaded guilty at Teesside Crown Court in December 2008, where they were all charged with copyright infringement offenses. The four were later sentenced to community service and fines.

The trial of OiNK founder Alan Ellis was pushed back and started today at Middlesbrough Crown Court. Due to a press boycott of the previous court hearings, there was no information available on the reasons for the delay.

What we do know is that Ellis has been charged with conspiracy to defraud the music industry for his role in the OiNK tracker.

During the first day of his trial little has happened. The case has been adjourned until tomorrow when the jury will be assigned. There is still a reporting ban in place on three specific issues, but the trial can and will be reported on.

We will cover the rest of the trial, which is expected to end next week, in the coming days.

Update: Court documents list the remaining uploader as part of the trial, but new information received by TorrentFreak says that his case is due later this year.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Cleveland police, having originally stated that the charges against Alan would be revealed December 2007, extended the bail for another for two months, only to extend it again until May and then again until the end of June.

When they still weren’t ready to charge anyone by this date, they extended bail again until July 28th 2008. However, today, the police have extended the date again for Alan, and the other six arrested in connection with the case.

The six who were arrested, five men aged between 19 and 33, and a 28-year-old woman, were done so on suspicion of “Conspiracy to Defraud the Music Industry”, and other copyright offenses.

Repeated in the mainstream press such as the BBC, these allegations of serious fraud take on a really sinister tone, but the reality is somewhat different. At most these individuals did what an estimated 6 million others do in the UK on a regular basis – they simply shared files. None of the six are accused of anything more than offenses linked to the uploading of a single album each, yet today they will report again to the police, their lives on hold.

Elsewhere today in the UK, will be the characteristic sound of letters dropping through the front door onto the mat. Some people will be getting bills, others direct mail and junk. Some will be getting well wishes on a happy occasion. Others will be opening an unexpected letter from their ISP which claims they have been caught uploading music by the BPI, that they’ve been very naughty and shouldn’t do it again.

After long negotiations between the music industry and ISPs, along with a considerable amount of government ‘encouragement‘, sending out educational letters was considered a proportionate response to the ‘problem’ of file-sharing. Even the disconnection of uploaders was considered draconian, and there is certainly no suggestion of police involvement.

Shouldn’t the six OiNK uploaders be getting a “friendly” letter and a slap on the wrist too?

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

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.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

We also discovered that other people had been arrested and deduced from our sources that this police action was taken against alleged pre-release uploaders – those that share before the retail date.

A few minutes ago in an email to TorrentFreak, Cleveland Police confirmed that a total of six individuals were arrested, all in connection with the uploading of pre-release music.

Three of the arrests were made on Friday 23rd May and three more on Wednesday 28th May. The arrested individuals are five men aged between 19 and 33, and a 28-year-old woman.

Suspects were taken to their local police station for questioning and required to provide DNA samples and fingerprints. According to our sources, they were arrested on suspicion of “Conspiracy to Defraud the Music Industry” although this hasn’t yet been confirmed by the police.

We can confirm that at least two of the arrests are for the alleged uploading of a single album. All have been bailed pending further enquiries.

Update: The Register contacted the BPI who gave this statement:

The BPI and IFPI worked with the police in order to close down the OiNK tracker site last October. The illegal online distribution of music, particularly pre-release, is hugely damaging, and as OiNK was the biggest source for pre-releases at the time we moved to shut it down. We provided the information to assist this investigation, but this is now a police matter and we are unable to comment further at this stage.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

‘OiNK’ himself participated in a short Q&A and the truth is that this is not the case. Here is a rundown of the salient points:

The raid was completely unexpected and came with no warning at all but steps had already been taken to protect the users. Although there was no ‘self-destruct’ or encryption according to OiNK, “the logs we store aren’t enough to incriminate users.” This will come as a huge relief to ex-members of OiNK.

A Cleveland Police spokesman told The Telegraph: “It is too early to tell if we will go after individuals, it all depends on what we find.”

OiNK is accused of conspiracy to defraud and copyright infringements with police questioning OiNK for hours after which he was eventually released. It became apparent that the police had limited technical knowledge which, according to OiNK “made the interview quite amusing.”

OiNK’s father – who was also dragged into this, is fine – although the police took his laptop.

There was an implication that a backup of the site may exist, although this is unconfirmed and there is no news yet that the forums will be restored for the purposes of music discussion. Additionally, it’s unclear if OiNK remains the owner of the OiNK.CD domain.

Sites have been cropping up claiming to collect donations for legal defense but according to OiNK there aren’t any that potential donators should feel comfortable donating to right now.

Certain changes had been made to the OiNK site and IRC channel in recent weeks security-wise and there was a suggestion that this may have been because a raid was expected. OiNK has denied this and confirmed these changes were a coincidence.

In echoes of what happened to Alexander Hanff (admin of the BitTorrent tracker DVDR-Core) Alan Ellis aka OiNK has been fired from his IT Consultant job following the raid but has refused to elaborate on what grounds his employer – Virgin Media in Stockton-on-Tees – chose to dismiss him.

It’s hugely commendable that OiNK has taken the time to come out and give the community timely facts. Alan told The Daily Telegraph: “I haven’t done anything wrong. I don’t believe my website breaks the law. They don’t understand how it works.”

Stay Tuned

Update: Seems like someone involved in the takedown left an administrative message on the OiNK site (thanks for the tips DaanRiver and R10T):

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.