This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Business News Digital Legal
Oink trial kicks off
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 8 January 2010
So, the Oink trial kicked off at Teesside Crown Court this week, which is exciting, because it gives us an excuse to put their cute pig logo on the CMU News-Blog. And it is the cutest logo to have ever come out of the P2P phenomenon. Though covering this trial isn’t all good news. There’s the whole issue of whether to write it Oink or OiNK. We asked the judge for legal clarification on this, but he was too busy giggling at the cute pig logo to comment, so we’re going with Oink. For now.
Anyway, you may or may not remember that Oink was a British-based invite-only file-sharing community providing links to BitTorrents of all sorts of unlicensed content. According to prosecutors, when they shut the community down in 2007 it had just under 200,000 users, who between them had downloaded some 21 million illegal songs. I’m not sure where that last stat comes from because I’m not sure file-sharing tracking technology is clever enough to know that for a fact, but whatever.
Six men were arrested in connection to the site, four of whom pleaded guilty to copyright infringement in late 2008, getting community service and fines for their crimes. Two cases are pending, the biggest of which is that which began this week, the case against Alan Ellis, who founded the community. He is charged with conspiracy to defraud.
Ellis, of course, denies liability for copyright infringement, using the classic defence, that the Oink website and server did not, in itself, host any unlicensed content, it merely provided a forum through which others could share music. Sometimes the classic defences are the best defences, though in most P2P service provider cases around the world that one has failed, with the providers of P2P software like Napster and Kazaa, and BitTorrent search and tracker services like The Pirate Bay, generally being found guilty of contributory or authorising infringement. This, however, is the first big test of the concept of authorising infringement in the P2P domian in the English courts.
Other revelations presented at the outset of the prosecution’s case this week centred on the monies made by Ellis by operating the venture. There wasn’t a subscription fee as such for using Oink, but users were encouraged to make donations, and it’s alleged that a donation was compulsory whenever someone wanted to invite a friend to join the community. Prosecutors say Ellis had amassed $300,000 in donations by the time site was shut down.
According to The Times, prosecutor Peter Makepeace told the court: “It is clear that he received by way of donations personally almost $300,000. Every penny was going to Mr Ellis. He hadn’t sung a note, he hadn’t played an instrument, he hadn’t produced anything. The money was not going to the people it rightly belonged to, it was going to Mr Ellis”.
Prosecutors say that while Ellis pleaded not guilty when questioned about his role in copyright infringement, he refused to answer their questions when it came to the monies generate by the Oink service.
Arguably the fact Ellis profited from running the Oink service is not relevant with regards his liability for copyright infringement – he could still be liable if no money at all had changed hands. Though it’s the large amount cash generated by Oink that made this a criminal rather than civil case, which, of course, has an impact on the ramifications of being found guilty.
Either way, the prosecution’s opening statements were all a bit predictable. But given this is, to an extent, a test case in English law, it will be interesting to see what arguments Ellis’ defence will try out. The case continues.
