British jury clears founder of music-sharing Web site Oink of fraud charge

Founder of file-sharing Web site cleared of fraud

LONDON — The founder of a Web site accused of being one of the world’s biggest sources of illegally downloaded music was cleared of fraud by a British court on Friday.

Music-industry group the BPI said the verdict in Britain’s first trial for online file-sharing was “hugely disappointing.”

Alan Ellis set up Oink, a members-only site that let users exchange music files, in 2004.

By the time police raided his house in Middlesbrough, northern England, in October 2007 the site had almost 200,000 members who had downloaded 21 million music files.

Ellis’s arrest followed a two-year investigation by Dutch and British police, who said they had shut down a major source of illegally downloaded music.

Prosecution lawyer Peter Makepeace told the trial at Teesside Crown Court that Ellis was guilty of “large-scale, professional, clever, technical ripping off.”

The 26-year-old software engineer said he had set up Oink to improve his computer skills and had no intention to defraud copyright holders. The site did not host any music itself, but indexed files that users had on their computers for others to download.

Police found almost 300,000 pounds in Ellis’s bank accounts when he was arrested. Ellis said the money, from members’ donations, went to pay for the rental of a computer server.

A jury found Ellis not guilty of a charge of conspiracy to defraud. His lawyer, Simon Rose, said Ellis was “very happy with the verdict.”

“It has been an incredibly stressful two years following his televised arrest in 2007, which resulted not only in these proceedings but in him losing his employment,” Rose said.

The BPI said in a statement that Ellis made money “by exploiting other people’s work without permission.”

“The case shows that artists and music companies need better protection,” it said.

The group said the verdict was “out of line with decisions made in similar cases around the world, such as The Pirate Bay.”

Last year the operators of Swedish file-sharing site The Pirate Bay were convicted and sentenced to a year in jail for breaching copyright law.