At last an article that doesn't confound downloaders with uploaders.

for being an elitist snob frankly.

support the scene and the scene supports you.

Pigs :p

"conspiracy to defraud the record industry"

Is there such a crime on the statue books? If so, then a huge proportion of the UK population should also be in the dock - remember the 'home taping is killing the record industry' bollox?

And doesn't to defraud mean to deprive someone *of* something? Ah, never mind, this will be driven through by mass hysteria and wilful obfuscation in court, no doubt.

Interesting, How has he defrauded the Media industry exactly?

For this to be fraud surely he would have had to obtain money from them (or others) by offering a service or goods which were not delivered.. If the Media industry has no contract or supplier relationship with him, how can he defraud them? Seems to me that the only people he could have defrauded are the OiNK members.

Maybe he will be charged with supplying 'fake' copyright infringing goods? Or deceiving members into thinking they were getting multimedia files when in fact delivering no such thing (random data?) Will there be a big queue of OiNK member lining up to tell the court how he promised to supply illegal downloads and pre-releases to them, but did not deliver..

Or maybe this is a deliberate 'wrong' charge in order to let him get away and therefore justify even more draconian copyright laws.

Also; since the media biz. is almost exclusively based in the US why was he not 'Gary'd' and fast tracked to the US to face charges there? Surely the US courts with the DMCA etc.. to call upon would be the venue of choice for such a mastercriminal?

You're a Cock.

Oink was the best-designed and most efficient source on the web for music. Better quality and more range than the commercial services. What's this "scene" you talk of? Backscratching egomaniacs torn between "look at me" and "i'm a 133t secret ninja ftw".

Oink by contrast was about MUSIC. All the range, all the quality. In a sane world the admin would get medals not handcuffs and artists would work out how to get paid from this efficient and effective distribution system.

&Pat: Aren't all downloaders in a bitorrent network also uploaders? Certainly can't see how you could maintain a decent ratio on Oink without also uploading something unique...

if he was getting that much from it, im pretty sure he would get a decent legal team and blow the technophobe pigs, no pun intended, into next week with how torrents are just like links, proof of server running costs and the fact that the donation OPTION, was exactly that, a "donation option"

The smug, sanctimonious trolls are already out of their dirty little pits and it's only lunchtime!

It seems they have finally managed to find a charge that more or less equates to "encouraging copyright infringement", sorry little tale but those fat cats want someone to crucify and the torrenters want a martyr!

I still use torrents, I upload and download and I know the risks involved. I am one of millions who do, my number could come up at any second and I'd be in the wotnot. Like any gamble in life you pays your money and takes your choice. if it pays off, great, if it fails...

How?

£100,000 ?

How?

They did not charge for using it and did not have adverts.

HOW!?!?!?!?

I was a member and never paid for anything!

It seems that either Oink done a fantastic job of protecting their users........................................or Plod couldn't be bothered chasing all the freetards. Whichever the reason good news for the 100,000+ users.

If only the Government could protect our personal details so diligently. No flash drives going missing here! One year they have been investigating this and fraud is all they have..

I would imagine that the 5 other people being prosecuted would be called 'runners' (in the scene), but the term runner would probably confuse the court so they are just calling them uploaders.

Thumbs up for protecting their customers security. Hope the Government is watching how it should be done.

The Digital Mafia (RIAA/MPAA and local UK Branch) have lost nothing, as nothing have been stealed!!! If that site was making as much money as the (corrupted) court said... then it is only one more proof that music can make money on the internet and this WHITOUT sueing and bankrupting whole family and whitout the users having to paid a cent (the radio seem to have understand that)

"In this case it is 100% accurate to label the original suppliers of the content as uploaders if they uploaded the original media files to the website."

In that case your conclusion is 0% accurate.

They did not upload any copyrighted media files to the website, just a small torrent file.

Paris, cos her media files uploads are 100% accurate.

Lets hope some investigative journalist submits a Freedom Of Information request to find out exactly how much of our tax revenue is being frittered away.

Hey look! A flying pig!

Fortunately the media circus surrounding this case should help educate more of the public about the benefits of using torrents.

No such thing as bad publicity.

""It is a well established legal premise that downloading for free deprives the record industry of revenue. Even the most abject Freetard accepts that this is a point of law and fact. By extension loss of revenue to record companies is loss of taxation revenue to the government so they will pursue this.""

I know a lot of freetards and most of them do not acept this point in fact most of there arguments revolve around the fact that a download <> a loss of sale most downloads are "for seeing of I might like it" or "I like it bout nowhere enought to pay the £20 they want for it" or "I want it but I can not get it anywhere else" or even "I own it but the orignal meida it damaged or wrong format or lost"

I just have to ask, you see, since i paid for this inquiry through Taxes and having some knowledge of Cleveland.......

Is this really the most important crime going on in Teesside at the moment? Were the million plus £ spent on this really more important than reducing the burglaries, the car crime, the street robberies, the anti social behavior, the domestic violence or even the drink driving that blytes every large urban conurbation in the UK with Teesside being no exception to that rule.

Cleveland Police, like all Police Forces already struggle to even dent all the above, but yet the find enough spare cash, in the Millions to fund such a large and disproportionate expensive inquiry when compared to actual crime which is still arguably a civil offence and not a criminal matter that should involve the Police.

I realise that most of the UK readership do not live in Teesside and the £1 and change proportion of their Council Tax that the Police get will not have been spent on this but their larger taxes,in the form of Government central funding will have.

Furthermore what exactly was the role of the Federation Against Copyrights Theft (FACT) role in all this? Why was their involvement trumpeted as a multi agency private public partnership now not even mentioned? Could it be, as suggested, that an ambitious but largely ignorant senior Officer looking for a national, even international headline grabbing investigation believed everything he was told by FACT, swallowed it hook line and sinker and only realised the truth when it was too late? Are these charges nothing but a face saving exercise, a ridiculous test case aimed at preventing embarrassment rather than forging new legal ground?

I always had trouble believing the "Hundreds of Thousands of Pounds" line, this just looked like a private tracker with limited membership similar in every way to the dozens shut down, quite legally and properly through the civil courts in every other sane country. Everything ever said in Public Statements by the Cleveland Police smelled wrong, smelled of ignorance and Industry Rhetoric probably provided chapter and verse by these FACT advisors.

Regardless of all the above, i find it hard to see how the Cleveland Police can justify spending their limited budget on a investigation that really only serves to, arguably, protect the profit margin of foreign companies who themselves are under investigation for anti trust sharp & Spanish practices dating back decades.

One of the grounds for deciding on whether a charge should be leveled against a suspect is that is the matter "Is in the publics interest?". I find it hard to believe that this is, given all the rest of the issues facing society today, its not exactly keeping the streets safe or combating white collar crime now is it? Police budgets after all are quite simple, spend money / resources here and you cant spend it elsewhere, therefore you can be certain that somewhere in Teesside some old dears are getting their life savings screwed because the resources aren't available anymore to prevent or detect the shits who are bang at it.

Frankly this stinks of career ambition driven hubris.

Please note this is not a Freetard defence piece, i don't really care about them, their impact has not harmed the creation of new media as far as i can tell because i can still buy new media. Should this change and they do actually damage the industry then ill start to care and start to want them crushed. However like most other paytards i realise that this is unlikely, it hasn't happened yet and it probably wont, so i don't care what they get up to listen to music a week earlier than me.

Also please note any of you militant paytards who object to uncaring paytards like me who trot out that old classic that the freetards drive up prices. Well you can stuff that up your militancy becuase like every other paytard in Rip Off Britain my wallet gets raped more by the anti trust and cartlesim of the Industry than it ever could because of a bunch of freetards who cant afford to buy the stuff in the first place.

Freetards, i just dont care what you do and neither do the majority of paytards.