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Oink man squeals
Alan Ellis, the IT expert arrested at the behest of the record labels, has turned up - somewhat surprisingly - in the Daily Telegraph defending his OiNK operation:
“I haven’t done anything wrong. I don’t believe my website breaks the law. They don’t understand how it works.
"The website is very different from how the police are making it out to be. There is no music sold on the site - I am doing nothing wrong.
"When I set up the site I didn’t think I was doing anything illegal and I still don’t. There are 180,000 users and there has been an outcry about what has happened to me.
"People who download music also buy CDs as well. A lot of people download music on the internet to get a taste of it and then later buy the CD.
"But I don’t sell music to people, I just direct them to it. If somebody wants to illegally download music they are going to do it whether my site is there or not.
"If this goes to court it is going to set a huge precedent. It will change the internet as we know it.
"As far as I am aware no-one in Britain has ever been taken to court for running a website like mine. My site is no different to something like Google.
"If Google directed someone to a site they can illegally download music they are doing the same as what I have been accused of. I am not making any Oink users break the law. People don’t pay to use the site.”
"The website is very different from how the police are making it out to be. There is no music sold on the site - I am doing nothing wrong.
"When I set up the site I didn’t think I was doing anything illegal and I still don’t. There are 180,000 users and there has been an outcry about what has happened to me.
"People who download music also buy CDs as well. A lot of people download music on the internet to get a taste of it and then later buy the CD.
"But I don’t sell music to people, I just direct them to it. If somebody wants to illegally download music they are going to do it whether my site is there or not.
"If this goes to court it is going to set a huge precedent. It will change the internet as we know it.
"As far as I am aware no-one in Britain has ever been taken to court for running a website like mine. My site is no different to something like Google.
"If Google directed someone to a site they can illegally download music they are doing the same as what I have been accused of. I am not making any Oink users break the law. People don’t pay to use the site.”
Of course, while all this may be true - subject to court opinion - the key question is if Ellis was making cash off the site; on this question, he chose to keep quiet. I suspect he might need to start building a more robust defence of his activities than claiming to be a bit "like Google" if he was making money as an introduction service, especially if reports that membership of the service was predicated on sharing music files with other users are accurate.
7 comments:
they arent accurate though. surely you must have been aware of oink yourself simon?
He's a joke. I'd be happy to see 'donation' p2p sites sink like so much excrement. Found this:
http://www.cdfeed.com/oink-death.jpg
Surely won't be on Digg anytime soon!
it wasnt really a donation site though! no one actually paid anything, other than utter geeks of course
I wonder if ANY of the '180,000' members of his site would actually dip their hand in their pockets to pay towards his legal costs.
Meh...
Methinks private p2p is the way of the future, check out www.gigatribe.com for an awesome private p2p app! (feel free to invite jcarricaburu if you try it out!)
A credible source tells me that the IFPI and their affiliates (RIAA, BPI, MIPI, BIEM) are already liaising with police forces and organising the largest ever synchronised raid on the houses of pretty much everyone who has paid for an OINK account. The memo is to find any illegal copies of music and "break them on the wheel", making an example on them. This is going to be bigger than the paedophile raids that netted Pete Townshend.
If you were on Oink, *destroy your hard drives now*, before the SWAT team shows up. You may have only hours or minutes to do so. Don't just reformat them; physically destroy them. Disassemble them and use drain cleaner on the platters, or dump them in a high-temperature incinerator. Make sure that nothing can be recovered.
Thank goodness for credible sources like yourself Mr Anonymous.
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