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roberth · 15/01/2010 05:12 PM

Ars Technica Wrote:A UK court has acquitted the admin of music sharing site OiNK of the one and only charge brought against him: conspiracy to defraud copyright owners. Twenty-six-year-old Alan Ellis was unanimously found not guilty by a jury in a Teesside Crown Court Friday, despite efforts from the music industry to paint him as a "cunning" liar who made money off the hard work of others.

The OiNK drama goes back to October of 2007 when police seized OiNK's servers and arrested Ellis after two international music rights groups, IFPI and BPI, spent two years working to investigate the tracker. At the time, the Cleveland Police said that the "hundreds of thousands of pounds" being brought in were stashed in various bank accounts, and the IFPI claimed that there were over 180,000 "hard-core" file sharers leaking hot demos or prerelease mixes to the invite-only service.

Police quickly followed up on Ellis' arrest by pursuing a number of OiNK's users, though they were unable to succeed in trying to find a personal connection between Ellis and the users. Ellis was eventually released on bail, but the case continued to drag on for more than two years. As part of their argument, prosecutors called OiNK a "cash cow," alleging that Ellis made £300,000 off some 21 million downloads.

Ellis, of course, argued that his involvement was akin to providing a service like Google—OiNK merely allowed users to find what they were looking for from other users, he said. When University of London professor Birgitte Andersenok testified that file sharing has actually led to more music sales, music industry prosecutors called her account "garbage" and described Ellis as telling "persistent, cunning, calculated lies," according to The Gazette.

Ellis' defense lawyer made a point that Ellis was in regular contact with copyright owners before OiNK was shut down in 2007, but that he was never told to stop what he was doing by the IFPI or anyone else. In fact, musicians actually used his site to promote their own music before the IFPI turned around and had the site taken down. "If anybody’s acting dishonestly it’s them," Ellis' lawyer Alex Stein said.

Evidently the jury agreed, by voting unanimously in Ellis' favor after hearing closing arguments Friday morning. The case was the first of its kind in the UK, making the jury's decision a landmark one that is sure to be a pain in the music industry's behind for years to come as it tries to keep playing P2P Whac-a-Mole. The IFPI did not respond to our request for comment on Ellis' acquittal, but BPI told The Register that it was unhappy with the decision. "This is a hugely disappointing verdict which is out of line with decisions made in similar cases around the world, such as The Pirate Bay," BPI said. "The case shows that artists and music companies need better protection."

Source: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/...oubles.ars

Wee were just talking about this site in College today...how Ironic. Still, its good to see that once every so often the courts can actually make a fair and decent descision about defendants, it doesn't seem to happen often enough.