Oink admin’s bail further extended
Cleveland police have extended the bail granted to the former administrator of an alleged music piracy site for a second time, in a bid to collect more evidence for a case that could mark a watershed for UK internet law. Alan Ellis, a 24-year-old IT worker from Middlesborough, was arrested in October on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud and copyright infringement offences, over his site OiNK’s Pink Palace. A police spokeswoman said today that he had been briefly reinterviewed today for clarifications and granted police bail to reappear on May 6. The extension has been sought to allow more time for computer forensics, she said. The deadline for investigators to gather evidence and decide whether or not to bring charges was originally scheduled for 21 December. Early in December however, police extended the cut-off to today, 4 February. At the same time the servers were returned wiped to OiNK’s Dutch ISP.
Now the reckoning has been postponed again, bringing the total length of the inquiry to more than seven months. From 2004 until his arrest last year, Ellis ran OiNK as an invitation-only BitTorrent tracker that focused on high-quality music files. It was shut down by a high profile dawn raid on his flat, coordinated with Dutch authorities seizing servers and a search of his parents’ home in Cheshire. The swoop was dubbed “Operation Ark Royal”. Since his arrest, Ellis has publicly argued that OiNK merely provided a Google-like indexing service, and cannot be held accountable for the actual music files that the trackers poined to. It’s the same defence that’s set to be used by the administrators of the Swedish BitTorrent tracker Pirate Bay in their upcoming trial. Oh God, when will all those special investigation units focus on real criminals, child molesters and other villains? This is one big PR comedy…
Source: Register
Comments(51)
R.i.P. OiNK
as long as oink didn’t have the music files on his server but like you said he only had the direction for people to go to find the files i think he should not be charged with anything, they take are freedoms away slowly everyday in the real world and now they want to take it away in cyberspace to, FREEDOM I SAY FREEDOM LET THE REVOLUTION BEGIN!!!!!!!
did any1 read the news on FBI plannin to collect biometric details of nearly everyone in US and people who visit it?
i mean WTF is goin on? why cant these guys be stopped? the terrorists these guys keep talkin about simply dont exist!!
leave us alone somewhere guys….please…..
RiP Oink…..Missing Demonoid…
have been searching for a good private tracker covering a variety a stuff just like demonoid…none found…
what a bunch of sh@t
only 1 out of 40 child molesters gets caught
but every good website gets taken down
R.I.P. Oink, i mis the pink palace, there is nothing like oink on the internet.
I only used 2 private trackers, oink and demonoid. Both gone, now got ilovetorrents, moviex, tvtorrents.
So, let me see if I understood it right. Is it somewhat illegal to give such links without hosting them? I thought we were safe on that area.. I don’t really see anything illegal there, unless maybe if the site charges money to get to those links, but still we shouldn’t be guilty for software that is on the internet whether we offer the links or not..
If he’s cleared of the charges, I hope he sues for the destruction of his “property” (servers wiped).
Ret@rded waste of time.
the server wiping is spectacularly naughty, i think. hope he screws them over for it, but i suspect he’ll simply be happy to put the whole thing behind him, assuming he gets away with it (which he ought to)…
but then again, was he charging people to join oink? or was it, like you say, just a free invite only thing? if he was charging, theyve arguably got an angle to prosecute on him making money on the ‘possession of stolen goods’ line.
as long as it was free, i cant see how they could possibly get a conviction for anything. like he says, google is just as bad, and i cant see them trying to shut down google (ha! can you imagine what a fun lawsuit that would be!?)
the government is repeatedly proven to be corrupt; foreign spies can come to england, murder their former colleagues and walk free; gun, knife and other violent crimes are become steadily more common, and the uk police force is worried about what? filesharing?! ‘copyright theft’!?!
glad to see my taxes being put to good use.
Poor OINK.. miss em so much.. .looking to trade tv torrent or st.music invite for waffles or what.cd if any1 interested.
nwkid178@hotmail.com
Q: when will all those special investigation units focus on real criminals, child molesters and other villains?
A: When we have a fair and just society. Don’t hold your breath.
First a big respect to Alan and I hope it all pans out for him, I was a user of the site from the early days, it also was the best music site on the internet with a wide range of music that educated people, Itunes and others are crap in comparason. I also feel that the albums that are being produced at this time are not as good quality as in the past, when was the last time that you bought a album that you liked all the tracks on.
If he was only providing links and not hosting any files then whats the problem? Search for a file on google and it will return thousands of links to “copyright” material for you to download…does this mean g00gle is next?
Google have the money for good representation.
Legally speaking, cases like this are arguable.
So if you can afford it, you can go to court and debate the issue.
Unfortunately the OiNK owner isn’t as rich as Google.
This was like 24 hours old when you posted it.
Don’t block me again.
“high profile dawn raid” lmao it was probably a few fat pigs (pardon the pun)who rang the doorbell and trotted up to his pc and bagged it.
I´ve been using Soulseek for all my music for years.
http://www.slsknet.org, who needs oink anyway.
Dont do the Crime if you cant do the time!
Cant really compare oink to google, google doesnt encourgae you to upload copyrighted content, oinks web site had 1 purpose, to steal music he even made money out of it,,, i hope the man doesnt go prison but if he does then fair play, its not like he didnt know this day would proberly come eventually
Ummm, so they still don’t have enough, if any real, evidence, so they are postponing it… again. Pathetic.
bizarre, its time for the FBI, police etc etc to focus on more important crimes…
@9 no one was charged to join oink, where you gretting your info from? lol
nobody was asked to pay a subscription, nor were they charged for data usage.
If anyone wanted to donate for the upkeep of the site they were given a few gb to do what they wanted with.
Oh God, when will all those special investigation units focus on real criminals, child molesters and other villains?
Wow. One of the best arguments ever. Pirates are real criminals, no matter how you spin it.
and what crime did oink commit again?
Where the hell does it say that thou shalt not run a search engine and a forum.
@21 : Yep
The Oink admin is to the RIAA what Bin Laden is to the America. A digital terrorist who needed to be stopped at all costs because he was doing a lot of damage to their interests.I seriously think that the RIAA and MPAA should fund and establish a Guantanamo style prison for these cyber terrorists , maybe somewhere in one of those African hellholes.Enough is enough and it’s time to put down the gloves and rule with an iron fist !!!!
Prevention through strength !!!
“Ellis has publicly argued that OiNK merely provided a Google-like indexing service, and cannot be held accountable for the actual music files that the trackers poined to.”
That is hilarious! “I’m just like Google!”
Good luck in jail Ellis…try that Google excuse when a large black inmate is about to penetrate your anus.
u got to commit a crime to need an excuse lol
i think you are barking up the wrong tree there with your google argument. u can’t send him to jail for an analogy as far as i’m aware. nice try though
dear lord, some of you cave monkeys are incurable aren’t you ?
1. pirates = profit gain
2. warez boys = bloody poverty most of the times, have you seen the prices at legal software these days ?
lets just say im not in the financial position of buying Microsoft office ($600), AutoCAD ($4800) and Windows Vista Ultimate – because it’s the only Vista version that actually works 30% of the time ($459) IN ORDER TO FINALIZE MY PROJECTS AT SCHOOL.
@darran
The Google excuse is actually from Ellis, the guy under arrest.
No one is charging him with an analogy, that is for sure. They are charging him with illegal distribution of pre-release music, costing the music industry money.
@Vodoo
why would your school assign you a project that relies on use of tools that their students can not afford?
have you informed your teacher that you can not afford the tools necessary to complete your project?
perhaps you should attend a school that doesn’t require you use such expensive tools.
also not my style to take favourites so i will state my 3rd and final point of this tedious and useless discussion.
3. Oink was invitation only.
Demonoid was too BUT you could register once every Friday (more or less). At least that’s what i could gather from the “precious and accurate information” most of you could provide me.
thank you Eric, mighty useful advice there…maybe i will go learn to shine shoes for a living, most definitely wouldn’t cost me as much as a proper education would right ?
not to be rude but please, get up and see with your eyes how the world is….the real one off course.
@Eric
it is my own business if I want to use my money for drugs and partying instead of paying Microsoft for software.
they will have to suffer because I don’t have much money and I want to use it on fun stuff.
don’t think he distributed anything illegal. guess we’ll have to wait for judgement day on that one
“Oh God, when will all those special investigation units focus on real criminals, child molesters and other villains? This is one big PR comedy”
I agree on that one!
Well said.
“Alan Ellis, a 24-year-old IT worker from Middlesborough, was arrested in October on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud and copyright infringement offences”
In addition to stealing music, he was also defrauding users by stealing from them too. Shameful.
Hopefully the prison doors will stay shut on this loser for quite some time.
lol @34
so what you are saying is. someone got the police to accuse someone of something he made up. and then to report it how he saw fit. never seen that before
“In addition to stealing music, he was also defrauding users by stealing from them too. Shameful.”
..by having a free site and freely letting anyone that was there to freely spend their free time as they liked. yep sounds like he was defrauding everyone to me. lol
Voodoo… stop spouting BS. No school in their right mind would require students to purchase hundreds of dollars worth of software just to finish a project. Use your common sense, ffs. If a student didn’t have access to certain tools, they can either finish the work using the school’s computers or make arrangements to purchase it for students at a much discounted price. So you have absolutely no excuse, when all the software you mentioned can be bought legally at educational prices of $20.
at least some of you numptys are finally realising this whole thing is criminal. even if we do like to do it.
@ 36 arty
I don’t know in what pink world you live in, but in mine an operative system alone costs about the same as a computer and yes, you’re required to have to do school works and you’re gonna be screwed if you don’t have it. And what “school computers” are you talking about? In my country that’s an average of 1 computer per 500 students.
Certain sofware tools are so expensive that students would never get them. Imaging software, Autocad, Video codecs of professional grade… There would be no more trainees in IT tools than the ones who could afford them.
Hell, from where i’m from even schools use pirate stuff because they can’t afford software (and since they are public goverment property nobody will ever raid them for illegal use of software).
I hope the RIAA goes after google, yahoo and MSN also since their search engines also link to torrents and pirated material.
@costa200
I don’t know what backwards country you claim to be from, but unless it is a pre-historic land ruled by dinosaurs, then it its not believable.
Any place that is developed enough to have universities will computers at those universities. And if there is a shortage of computers in that country, then certainly the teachers will know that and plan accordingly.
Stop making excuses for why you don’t get your ass out of bed each morning and work hard to make the money to buy yourself a PC or software. Work two jobs if you have to…shine shoes, sell newspapers, wash cars…No more excuses, just do it.
@40 – Alex
May I ask what the f*** you are doing on RLSlog? If you dont support warez then why are you commenting on a site that publishes info on Scene releases?
If you want to shine shoes to buy a copy of office then do so but leave those who have better things to do and better ways of getting software alone.
CHada
I don´t understand why you lot are not supporting this young man, I bet most of you had account`s on OINK and you also download from the links on rlslog, I realise that you all have your opinions but I think that a lot of the comments are two feced on this post, grow up you lot its someones life you are having a dig at.
If the police wiped the servers, aren’t they guilty of destruction of evidence? I know they probably made a backup, but still, isn’t it considered important to keep the original in the condition it was when they seized it?
Never had an invitation so…. die oink.cd and demonoid
I didn’t know oink was set up by a limey sheep shagging northern monkey.
Haha, soooooo nowadays we can get persecuted for telling people where to get things?!?!?!
So, if i told somebody where to buy a LV bag from, and it turns out that the person is selling fake ones, i can get persecuted because i told the person where to buy it????
Very interesting…
If they manage to win against oink, then soon they going to come for Rlslog… isnt Rlslog basically doing the same, posting releases and pointing to Newtorrents to download it…
@Anon
“So, if i told somebody where to buy a LV bag from, and it turns out that the person is selling fake ones, i can get persecuted because i told the person where to buy it????”
That analogy isn’t correct. It is more like you are telling someone where they can get a stolen LV bag for free. And in that case, yes you can be prosecuted for fencing stolen goods.
Only in the real world we call it copyright infringement instead of stealing. It is still a crime.
I’m just waitin for the whole $hithouse to go up in flames. Not holding my breath though.
2+5, 2+5, 2+5 (three times in a row, does the spam protection not think i can add any other numbers).
out of 100, how good was OiNK (i never visited)
oink was great. was on for aomost four years and it became a wonderful community to find new & interesting music. now all we have is the crap they now call what.cd.
oh and if anyone has an invite to waffles.cd, i’d great appreciate it – liverthangod@gmail.com
thanks!