In UK, Oink Admin Cleared of Fraud 156
krou writes "The BBC is reporting that Alan Ellis, who ran music file sharing site Oink from his flat in the UK, has been found not guilty of conspiracy to defraud. Between 2004 and 2007, the site 'facilitated the download of 21 million music files' by allowing its some 200,000 'members to find other people on the web who were prepared to share files.' Ellis was making £18,000 a month ($34,600) from donations from users, and claimed that he had no intention of defrauding copyright holders, and said 'All I do is really like Google, to really provide a connection between people. None of the music is on my website.'" Reader Andorin recommends Torrentfreak's coverage, which includes summaries of the closing arguments.
Spin (Score:1, Troll)
34k a month? I dont feel sorry they went after him.
When police raided his terraced home in October 2007, they found almost 300,000 dollars in his accounts and the site had 200,000 members, who had downloaded 21 million files.
Mr Ellis said the money was used to pay for the server's rental and any "surplus" was intended to eventually buy a server.
I'm calling shenanigans on that too. $300k would buy some pretty nice servers, much less a server.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Making 500k for helping other people share material under copyright? Yea, jealous of the sum, but not of the method, shows a lot about his ethics.
Re: (Score:2)
Making 500k for helping other people share material under copyright? Yea, jealous of the sum, but not of the method, shows a lot about his ethics.
What exactly does the public library do? Which ethics do public libraries support?
Are you suggesting that we sue libraries out of existence for helping other people access material under copyright?
Re:Spin (Score:4, Insightful)
The Authors Guild probably would sue libraries if they didn't already have hundreds of years of history behind them. The only reason online sharing of books is illegal is because it's a new concept. The Boston Public Library is allowed to exist, but bostonlibrary.com is not.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
A local lending library does not have and never has had the ability to reproduce a single book for as many people as want it at no significant cost to themselves.
Hence libraries have never had the capacity to threaten the actual profitability of a book that much. See - there's a difference for you.
Re:Spin (Score:4, Interesting)
Nobody's proven that filesharing has the "capacity to threaten the actual profitability of a book that much" either.
Re: (Score:2)
To prove the 'capacity' is not the same as to prove that it's happening. Be careful where you're laying your burdens of proof here.
To prove that filesharing has the capacity to hurt book profits, all you need is a really easy economics argument about scarcity.
Re: (Score:2)
The main reasons libraries aren't currently a threat is the granularity of lending at the book level and the temporary nature of lending. Conceptually, imagine a lending system that worked on a page by page basis, with pages only being loaned out when actively being read. Ignoring bibliophiles (like me) that buy books that they already have free ebook copies of (aka, ignoring Baen's contention that free books drive revenue), I think this would cut in to profitability somewhat for 'best sellers'
Re: (Score:2)
Except if people read it at the library, why would they need to buy it? The problem is that the economy has changed and you don't like it. The marginal cost of copying things is no longer a concern. Business models need to change to match that reality.
Re: (Score:2)
You have confused terms. It should read: "if a person can read it at the library, why would people need to buy it?".
Let me illustrate. The Harry Potter books are available at libraries. Can everyone who wants to read one of those books when they come out go straight down to the library and do so? No - the library is not able to distribute hundreds of thousands of copies on demand and even if they were, each of those copies would have
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's like trying to make water not wet. Bits are easily copied. That's a plain and simple fact. Trying to pretend otherwise is stupid. What is stupid about the business is that they are trying to treat those bits as if they were scarce, just like they do with paper books. The problem is that physical goods ARE scarce. Sticking your fingers in your ears and saying "people are taking all my BITS!" is just pissing into the wind. Build a windmill instead of complaining about how all your paper hats are blowing
Re: (Score:2)
What's all this stuff about windmills? When people start talking in vague metaphors in response to simple questions, I begin to doubt whether they actually have an answer. Saying "Build a windmill" doesn't actually say anything though, does it? You have a situation where people who formerly sold copies of their work now find many are taking copies without paying anything in return in unprecedented numbers. That's a problem because it means that they have lost their ability to negotiate a price with their c
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
1) Movie rights
2) Signed physical copies
3) Posters, action figures, scarves, etc.
4) Speaking events.
5) something else i didn't think of in the last 3 minutes.
so no the [e]Book need not be your only source of income. see mike masnicks CWF+RTB stuff for more examples.
Re: (Score:2)
There was a situation where people who formerly sold buggy whips could no longer sell them. The realities of marketplaces change. Just because that's the way things used to be done doesn't mean it's the natural order of things.
Re: (Score:2)
Getting in entries for Worst Analogy of 2010, early, I see. People still want movies, books, music. People no longer wanted buggy whips. In the latter case, people moved on to other things. In the former case, people have started taking them en masse without paying the asked for price. Again - you're trying to liken things that are dissimilar for the sake of supporting your argument. Movies, music, software, books...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I thought the windmill metaphor was an excellent one.
I also disagree with your contention that pirates live off the rest of us. You don't pay any more as a result of someone else not paying. You already pay as much as the content producers think they can gouge out of you, and far more than the product is actually worth because its price is artificially inflated through corrupt legislation.
Or perhaps you think that someone should be earning millions a year for a piece of work they did 45 years ago, and that
Re: (Score:2)
You're misunderstanding his buggy whip analogy.
People do still want movies, music, software, books. In the buggy whip analogy, people still want transport.
What's changed is their approach to meeting that desire.
So instead of legalised horse bondage people switched to automated mechanisms.
Instead of physical media and distribution people switched to automated mechanisms.
In both situations, demand for the non-automated, slower and less convenient approach fell.
This is why the buggy whip meme occurred; it does
Re: (Score:2)
Whilst I enjoyed the phrase "legalised horse-bondage"
I said that it was a bad analogy. When you draw an analogy, you have to draw it to the correct thing. He draws his analogy directly with the medium of the good. Clearly the value in buying a DVD isn't the disc, or a book the paper and splotches of ink. Nor is the effort of producing one
Re: (Score:2)
I found it vague and misguided. He basically says the producers are at fault for not stopping people from ripping them off without giving anything in return. I'm quite certain that if someone found a way to force people to pay in return (say, a DRM method tha
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, that's not what I said. :) If people want to discuss changing copyright terms, then fine by me. That's a lot different from abandoning paying for content.
Re: (Score:2)
A local lending library does not have and never has had the ability to reproduce a single book for as many people as want it at no significant cost to themselves.
But that is just a technical distinction. Libraries work by giving me access to books without having to buy them. Indeed the rationale of libraries is to give people who cannot afford books access to them. Just because it is now possible for the library to sate all it's patrons at once by copying the eBook it is no difference.
As a library patron I am not a lost customer to the publisher (note I am avoiding saying author deliberately) since I was never going to be their customer anyway, I just don't have the
Re: (Score:2)
In other words: "Just because something is different, it is no different.
Go logic!
Re: (Score:2)
A local lending library does not have and never has had the ability to reproduce a single book for as many people as want it at no significant cost to themselves.
Most libraries have music CDs nowadays. Borrow the CDs, rip to FLAC, return the next day.
Most also have photocopiers, often coin-operated. Practically you can't copy an entire book this way, but you can certainly do a short chapter.
Neither of these are exactly what you're talking about, but they're close.
Re: (Score:2)
I think not.
Re: (Score:2)
No, no its not. Demand at the zero price point is NOT demand at any price point. If a poor kid borrows books from a library those are not lost sales--the kid didn't have money for the books anyway. No sales are lost.
Re:Spin (Score:5, Insightful)
If a poor kid borrows books from a library those are not lost sales--the kid didn't have money for the books anyway. No sales are lost.
And note that this was one of the primary reasons that public libraries were established. The intent was to bring books to "the masses" who mostly had no access to any sort of literature. The publishers weren't happy with the idea at the time, though they eventually learned to live with it. In the long run, a literate population that liked to read was in the publishers' long-term interest.
It's not hard to see the same anti-educational view in the objections to internet sharing. There's a strong sense that what publishers want is an end to my access to anything that I haven't first paid for. Of course, this means that I'd have no way of judging beforehand whether I want to read (or view or listen to) something; I'd just have to buy it, and in the 99% case that I don't actually like it, I can discard it. They're not just against my getting information on authors, musicians, etc. from a public library. They want an end to all sharing among friends or acquaintances, so we'd have no way of knowing if we like something without first paying for it.
Maybe we need to be bringing up the public libraries more in the growing debates over "sharing" online. It would benefit us all (and probably the producers, too), if there were an open and legal online equivalent to public libraries. Also, we should try to make it clear that introducing friends to things we like by sharing is still as legal as it was a few decades ago. Otherwise we'll lose a lot of what the supporters of public libraries and the "public domain" fought to establish in past centuries.
We don't really want to go back to the day when most of the public was intentionally kept illiterate and ignorant of most "culture". And we don't want to go forward to a system in which we can never discover whether we like something unless we've first paid for it. This is what the publishers and recording companies are pushing for.
Re: (Score:2)
First sale doctrine
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Slight difference: public libraries buy the books they loan out. This particular sleazebag didn't buy anything in order to "earn" £18,000 a month. He deserved a hefty fine and at least a suspended sentence.
Well. No one can point to a law that he broke soooo...
He did not do anything to Earn a fine. Unless you are just pissed that a guy found out how to make shitloads of cash for very little effort. In fact from looking at your post it would seem that is is the fact that he made a lot of money for no effort that pissed you off. What a sad life you must live.
Re: (Score:2)
Jealous much?
Right, because anyone who has a problem with potentially/allegedly ill-gotten gain can only be motivated by jealousy. A good thing like an objection to unscrupulous or at least questionable business methods can only come from a bad, petty thing like envy of someone else's money.
That's completely false, of course. However, that's really how a lot of people think. I suppose their own lust for money makes them think that everyone else operates as they do.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Anyone with your morals, that is.
Re: (Score:2)
If you allow pedos to host your images on your server for a fee that doesn't make you a pedo but you are profiting fro child pornography.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know about in your backward sounding country; but in the UK if a jury decides that a person is 'not guilty' then it has been decided they have not committed a crime. This may be an unusual system to you, but it is what is called the Justice System in the UK - other countries may not like it but it kind of suits us.
The jury hasn't decided that he has not committed a crime. It means he hasn't committed the crime he went to court for.
Of course he didn't defraud the copyright holders but but in my opinion there is very good evidence that he did defraud the users of his service. The mere fact he felt the need to spread the cash amongst numerous accounts says it all.
In fact it's my opinion most people asking for donations are just trying to profit through guilt tripping. That's why I won't donate anything unless it's
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Spin (Score:5, Funny)
What of it? Oink was his business, good for him for making a profit off of it.
Yeah...but he didn't have to be a pig about it and hog all the money.
[ba dum tsh]
Thank you! I'll be here all night. Try the pork!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
How could you have missed that he really brought home the bacon?
Were you just spamming puns?
Re: (Score:2)
And what a successful one it was indeed. Good profit, no jail time, happy times.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Profit?
That's an awfully big assumption. Sure he collected $34,000 from donations but if his online billing/expenses were $40,000 then he's not really getting rich, is he?
Re: (Score:2)
I would kind of assume that he would have quit and shut it down if he couldn't cover his costs.
Re: (Score:2)
Bad assumption. People often operate things at a loss, simply because they enjoy it. For example the niteshdw.com website (which had been sued by MPAA) was operating at a loss. The owner kept it going by using his own salary from being a full-time engineer.
Re: (Score:2)
This guy had £300,000 pounds lying around in his accounts for "buying a new server". He wasn't losing money.
Re: (Score:2)
That's an awfully big assumption. Sure he collected $34,000 from donations but if his online billing/expenses were $40,000 then he's not really getting rich, is he?
The $300,000 in a paypal account kind of shows he was doing a little better than breaking even :)
Re: (Score:2)
And I for one think he deserved it. I was one of those 200,000 users and Oink was by far the best site at the time for discovering new bands and acquiring their music. Their categorization and recommendation system, strict quality standards and ratio requirements ensured that you could quickly and easily find anything specific you were looking for and then see a bunch of similar artists. The community despite its large size felt very tightly knit.
As an Oink user my sphere of musical influence greatly expan
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe he did deserve it, but do you not think the artists who created the works in the first place deserved at least a share of his profits?
Re: (Score:2)
Oink was his business
Didn't he hold a regular job? I don't recall Oink being his career? maybe hobby/business/career needs a clarification?
Re: (Score:2)
34k a month? I dont feel sorry they went after him.
Trying to edge in on Apple and Microsoft's turf, and he didn't even pay his protection money to RIAA! No wonder the police came after him. I mean, seriously, what was he thinking?
I'm calling shenanigans on that too. $300k would buy some pretty nice servers, much less a server.
The cost of the hardware is hardly worth mentioning... this little enterprise is about bandwidth. A few grand a month can easily be spent on just a T1.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The cost of the hardware is hardly worth mentioning... this little enterprise is about bandwidth. A few grand a month can easily be spent on just a T1.
You do understand that bittorrent tracker itself doesn't burn bandwidth almost at all, but its extremely heavy on the server because so many hits are coming in all the time?
Re: (Score:2)
I'm guessing she doesn't.
Re: (Score:2)
Hardware costs were probably minimal compared to bandwidth & hosting expenses...
Re: (Score:2)
Obviously he would say all the money was for keeping the site running, saying anything else would have harmed his case. If you look at the userbase it's easy to see how he got it - 180,000 people dropping the odd few quid over 3 years would mount up quickly.
I have mixed feelings about him walking away with all that cash. Maybe I'm just surprised and a little jealous he could rack that much money up.
Maybe he should have donated some of the excess or disabled donations once he was above running costs, I don't
money (Score:4, Interesting)
The big question is...
Now that he has been found innocent, does he get his 300k back?
Or am I mistaken in assuming that his assets were seized?
Re:money (Score:5, Insightful)
Depends. Does the UK have civil asset forfeiture? Because in the US, that money would be found guilty and no one would ever see it again.
That's right, money can be guilty in the US if it associates with other money to a sum of $10,000 or more (or less, really, if the authorities really want it). Land of the free, my ass.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Depends. Does the UK have civil asset forfeiture?
Yes, the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. Drug trafficking, arms dealing, people trafficking, money laundering... is grounds for forfeiture of assets. As is "making an illicit recording", "possessing an article designed for making a copy of a copyright work".
Re: (Score:2)
Well there you go. He'll never see his money again, even if proven innocent.
If things in the US and the UK are as screwed up as they are, in pretty much the same ways, remind me again why my ancestors* fought yours for independence???
*Technically, my ancestors were either eeking out a living in the slums around Manchester or conducting raids against English landlords in County Cork in 1776, depending on which branch of the family tree you follow.
Re: (Score:2)
Technically, you make it sound like your ancestors made a living by being surprised a lot. Eke, ekes, eked, eking...
Re: (Score:2)
I'd go 'eek' if I had to live in Manchester.
Re: (Score:2)
Except as he was found "not guilty" no monies can be seized
Re: (Score:2)
you would think that. But in the US, assets seized by the government when they arrest you for a drug felony do not have to be returned or compensated for if you are found innocent or even if the charges are dropped if the assets have been auctioned off before that happens. Yay, war on freedom. :(
Re: (Score:2)
Well that's what happens when you have a Central government that pretends the People's Constitution does not exist. The government just does whatever the hell it feels like. It's leadership unconstrained by laws.
Proposed Amendment XXVIII
Section 1. After a Bill has become Law, if one-fourth* of the States declare the Law to be "unconstitutional" it shall be null and void. It shall be as if the Law never existed.
Section 2. This article shall be inoperative, unless it shall have been ratified as an amendmen
Re: (Score:2)
Proposed Amendment XXVIII
Section 1. After a Bill has become Law, if one-fourth* of the States declare the Law to be "unconstitutional" it shall be null and void. It shall be as if the Law never existed.
Section 2. This article shall be inoperative, unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths* of the several States by the date January 1, 2050.
* * [This is called a constitutional majority.]
Your "proposed amendment" would have made the Civil Rights Act and many other slightly unpopular but important constitutional measures impossible to pass. There's a reason super-majorities aren't required for most laws. It's because the government would end up doing nothing. (But I suppose that's your point, isn't it?)
Re: (Score:2)
Not true. Those laws still would have passed Congress, been signed by the President, and become law.
But the States would have (probably) declared them "unconstitutional" because Congress doesn't have the authority to regulate such things as who I hire or don't hire in my small store. ----- Now if Congress wants to add an amendment to the Constitution to enable them to regulate who gets hired or not, based upon color or sex, then they could do that. But without that amendment the Congress has no such p
Re: (Score:2)
>>>I doubt the State government would overrule the Federal
It's happened in the past. In the early 1800s the Northern States refused to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act, effectively nullifying Congressional law. More recently states are ignoring the U.S. prohibition on marijuana and making it legal for use by doctors (via prescription).
I think giving States the power to declare laws "unconstitutional" would effectively shackle Washington, and keep them from doing idiotic, tyrannical stuff (like fini
Re: (Score:2)
What about the cost of the investigation and prosecution? The IFPI lied to get the police involved and should now be expected to foot the bill.
Can't see it happening though. Aside from anything else the CPS would have to show that they were duped by the IFPI which is not something I would imagine they wish to make a big deal over.
Re: (Score:2)
Now that he has been found innocent, does he get his 300k back?
You never get your money back if you're working class scum. You have to be born into money before they let you keep any of it. Maybe you haven't heard that if you're carrying more than a few hundred dollars you can have it seized on suspicion of terrorism or drugs and the burden of proof is on you. It's the same with every dollar you have in electronic accounts...
There's tens, if not hundreds, of millions in assets seized on suspicions by various government agencies... and never heard from again. Afterall,
Re: (Score:2)
There was no 300K. That was the amount of donations OiNK got over 3 years' time... most of that would have gone to server cost, which was quite a lot towards the end (think $4000-$5000/month).
The prosecution apparently did a great job of making some of their lies and half-truths into things the public takes as facts now...
Re: (Score:2)
hey, I just based it on what the article said, I have not been following this story.
Re: (Score:2)
NO way dude.... they just sprinkled some crack on the money.... it is now the CEO of AIG's last week's lunch tab.
Wow. You took a UK court ruling and somehow made it about an American financial giant by stealing a race joke. I'm impressed. What's your next trick, telling us about how China's Google hack is really the cause of the Haitian earthquake?
Re: (Score:2)
actually, the first article clearly states he had 300k in his paypal account. Of course this is paypal, they have a tendency to lock your account and take your money for no reason at all, with no legal recourse because they are not a real bank.
£1 per member per year (Score:2)
He's an enabler... (Score:1)
And you know how the government hates enablers.
A car analogy:
His website was like a GPS, handy, but can still head you in the wrong direction.
An illegal drug analogy:
His website was like marijuana, it was a gateway to more nefarious things.
(Warning, the above was sarcasm)
Re: (Score:2)
Well in this case it was quite clear what was going on. C'mon, if you looked at the site and the torrent listing, one would had been a complete, unbelievably retard not knowing people we're using all those torrents for sole copyright infringement.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
I actually don't care one way or another, I was just being a smartass. I'm usually pretty good at it.
Implications for torrent sites? (Score:5, Interesting)
I do not know exactly how oink works (worked?), but from the quote
All I do is really like Google, to really provide a connection between people. None of the music is on my website.
Wouldn't that make exactly the same defence valid for Pirate Bay and other torrent sites?
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds more like an IRC network than a torrent site to me, but it certainly would be a valid defence for some cases (particularly those hosted in the UK). I'm not sure where they're drawing the line on 'providing connection between people' vs. 'facilitating copyright infringement', and it also probably depends heavily on who's drawing the line in which jurisdiction.
Re: (Score:2)
UK rulings to my knowledge, have no real authority outside of their jurisdiction (other countries) so the only way this could have any legal implications would be if TPB was based in the same jurisdiction as Oink. It could also be that the courts took into account his intentions as well and made a distinction between TPB and say Google or Oink.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I do not know exactly how oink works (worked?), but from the quote
All I do is really like Google, to really provide a connection between people. None of the music is on my website.
Wouldn't that make exactly the same defence valid for Pirate Bay and other torrent sites?
Yes, that is TPB's defense. But, different laws and courts for different nations, so the decision in the UK isn't applicable in Sweden.
Re:Implications for torrent sites? (Score:5, Informative)
It was a private BitTorrent tracker. The torrent files (containing the hashes) were generated by users and uploaded to the site. OiNK tracked the torrents and provided search for its torrents.
Re: (Score:2)
UK government has much more clout against US pressure. They were in bed during the Bush/Blair administration, but that affair was completely consensual.
And there's the House of Lords, which resists bribes^H^H^H^H^H^Hcampaign contributions. Not sure if Sweden has an equivalent, but I'd imagine Swedish nobility is probably poorer than British nobility.
Re:Implications for torrent sites? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, I think it's very much the opposite really. Regardless the Labour Party, the ruling junta of the UK, are very committed to the music industry. Many of their backers are from the music industry (and they need every penny right now, they are about to fight an election they can't win, and are near bankrupt). The UK has explored many different ways of dealing with filesharing, and is pretty much committed to a zero tolerance stance.
Fortunately the UK judges may be more wise in this instance that the braindead, thieving cretins who rule the UK.
In Sweden, what ever the laws are, the main issue seemed to be that the judge trying the Pirate Bay was corrupt, and in the pay of a Music Industry pressure group.
However, the reason why that judge may have been selected, the core issue with the Pirate Bay, was that they were, quite literally, asking for it. They taunted and mocked the music industry and the Swedish Justice system. It was only a question of time before someone was going to get them for something. As entertaining as they were, their approach to the situation was astonishingly naive, and guaranteed to get them jail time.
Re: (Score:2)
Wouldn't that make exactly the same defence valid for Pirate Bay and other torrent sites?
Yes.
Tis a shame The Pirate Bay didn't setup shop in the UK, where this defense is now known valid.
Silly pirates instead setup shop in a country where this is specifically legal to do, exactly so what happened wouldn't happen. I guess in this day and age, you never know who you can trust.
Re: (Score:2)
actually, they did just that. TPB was perfectly legal. They were just asshats and tried before a corrupt judge.
Re:Implications for torrent sites? (Score:4, Interesting)
The tracker functionality can also be compared to a DNS server...
Just query [32 char hash key].trackerdomain.com, the DNS returns the IP of one of the seeders, you connect to that IP and retrieve from that seeder a list of peers and seeders. Query same domain after a minute, you get another IP, which gives you another subset of seeders and peers and so on.
A tracker is really the same thing with a DNS server - you let a member add host records and you keep his domain but you're not responsible for the content of the subdomains it creates.
If someone creates a subdomain to his domain called "prodigy", it doesn't mean that person will sell or distribute Prodigy cd's or mp3 files from that subdomain, and the dns server owner doesn't have the content in his control, just like a tracker doesn't store the content of the files.
Re: (Score:2)
Ah yes, the Napster defense. Seems like this has been a colossal fail in the past.
It's nothing like google (Score:2)
You're right about Pirate Bay and in fact Pirate Bay was more like Google seeing how it wasn't invite only and one could easily stumble across freely rather than having to actively seek to share copyright material.
Re: (Score:2)
Google doesn't require an invite because they can afford thousands (literally) of servers in about 12 datacenters in various parts of the world and they finance these servers from ads.
Oink didn't have ads and if Oink would have allowed unlimited numbers of users, the number of servers would have gone to the roof - with 200k users it already had about 2 web frontend servers and about 3 database servers, I think. That's 5 powerful servers with about 300 pounds monthly costs each (think dual xeon with 8 Gb of
Re: (Score:2)
Pirate Bay was brought into court on "making available" charges, which exist in Sweden but not other places, notably the US and UK. It was ironic, perhaps, among the lax laws they relied upon they got screwed with one which even a DMCA nation doesn't have.
Re: (Score:2)
Small correction (Score:4, Informative)
tasty (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Can you tell me what sites you're talking about? Granted I haven't seriously looked in quite a while (been too busy with a new baby) but I've yet to see anything quite like oink.
The lawyers get paid for a song and dance (Score:2)
Strange route to take... (Score:4, Interesting)
Defrauding seems a bit of an odd charge to lay for this. It suggests that he was taking wealth from the record industry for direct personal gain.
The money cam from subscribers. They were not making any money from the file sharing. Even if he had a website that was explicitly dedicated to getting people in contact to fence actually stolen property I'd have thought this would be hard to make stick.
Doesn't UK law have anything along the lines of conspiracy to facilitate copyright infringement?
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
"Conspiracy to defraud"
Defrauding seems a bit of an odd charge to lay for this. It suggests that he was taking wealth from the record industry for direct personal gain.
Doesn't UK law have anything along the lines of conspiracy to facilitate copyright infringement?
The point of the case was, in the UK, as it currently stands, there are no laws against "making available"; which means the copyright holders that wanted the police to go after him ALREADY knew what the site was doing, at least in law, was all above board.
So instead, they urged the police to go another route and linked the donations recieved to the actual downloads themselves and tried to argue the case he was selling the music.
It's still fraud (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
300.000$ was the sum of all the money coming into his Paypal accounts for 2-3 years while the site was running. That also includes money he may have received from eBay bids, wages, freelancer work and so on.
Finally (Score:2)
A judge that has common sense and knows that when you provide a client that lets you communicate with someone else ....you don't like piracy , then create something non piratable..instead of trying to hold everybody else but yourself accountable for your failed product.
in form of data, it is no different then trying to say alexander graham bell is responsible for all conversations made using his phone.
Seriously, figure out a better drm system and stop trying to hammer the little guy
Re: (Score:2)
Didn't the site have donation bar that said running costs were like $2000/month, that was always "filling up" towards end of the month? If the running costs were that, it left a quite nice sum of rest of that $35 000 to him.