Oink Cleared Of Fraud

Oink Cleared Of Fraud

23rd January 2010

Teesside Crown Court has announced the decision on the case, which was filed against the owner of the famous file sharing website, Oink. It has been decided that this site has not been involved in any kind of conspiracy. Alan Ellis founded this site, which has almost 200,000 members. This 26 year old, was the first person in UK, who was prosecuted for illegal file sharing. Oink was being operated since 2004, by Alan from his flat in Middlesbrough, but was closed down in a police raid in the year of 2007.

During this time span, this site has facilitated the downloading of around 21million music files. This website has allowed its active members to find other members, who were willing to share files. Users were supposed to make donations, in order to invite their friends to join this site. During the trial, it was disclosed that Mr. Ellis had received $18,000 in a month in donations from all those people, who used his site.

Just after few months of completing his degree, he had successfully saved £20,000, despite only starting his job of software engineer job. Originally, this site was hosted on Ellis`s home computer, but in the year of 2007, he had to move to a commercial server in Amsterdam because of attracting more internet traffic.