OiNK creator cleared of fraud – uses Google as file-sharing defense
The entertainment industry has had a good run of late in shutting down and prosecuting file-sharing Web sites and those who use them. But that run came to an end today, with the creator of OiNK being cleared of wrongdoing.
In October 2007, police raided the home of the man they suspected of owning and running OiNK.cd, a private, invite-only file-sharing site. The site was shut down, and Alan Ellis was arrested, becoming the first person in the U.K. to be prosecuted for illegal file-sharing.
Two years later, Ellis faced his fate, having been charged with conspiracy to defraud. But in an obvious blow to the entertainment industry, the jury at Teesside Crown Court unanimously cleared Ellis, and he was acquitted of the crime and set free.
The charge of conspiracy to defraud arose from the fact that Ellis was found to have acquired almost $300,000 from donations to the site. Donations weren’t obligatory for membership to the site, but most people did donate small sums. By the time the site was shut down, it had 200,000 members, who had collectively downloaded 21 million files.
However, the defense persuaded the jury that Ellis operated the site in the open and wasn’t setting out to deceive those using it. Furthermore, he was using the money to maintain the site, eventually planning to upgrade the servers.
According to The Guardian, at the time of his arrest, Ellis decried:
All I do is really like Google, to really provide a connection between people. None of the music is on my Web site.
Which is, of course, an entirely true and accurate statement of what the site did – acted as a go-between for people to find and share files. The Pirate Bay used a similar defense in its case but still lost. But a quick search on Google provides all the evidence anyone can ever need that the search giant provides a similar service.
This is a small victory for those who want the right to share files on the Internet. But I doubt it’ll have any effect on the overall picture. Committed file-sharers are now going underground, while freemium services such as Spotify are emerging as compromises. In other words, the situation has changed since 2007 anyway.
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