The administrator of OiNK, the once popular private BitTorrent website, as well as five others, have appeared before court recently. No plea has been entered by Ellis.
Note: This is an article I wrote that was published elsewhere first. It has been republished here for archival purposes
If there’s anything that the arrest of the OiNK admin proved, it’s that making a BitTorrent website private won’t make it impenetrable to investigators. It was once thought that a password protected website was a fortress that kept authorities out (and some still think this way today) but if authorities wanted to make an example, they did so in this case.
The report comes from The Independent. Alan Ellis is currently charged with conspiracy to defraud. Five others appeared before court charged with copyright infringement:
They were: James Garner, 19, from Winsford, Cheshire; Michael Myers, 34, of Brough in East Yorkshire; Matthew Wyatt, a student in London but originally from Stamford, Lincolnshire, 19; Mark Tugwell, 19, from Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, and Steven Diprose, 21, from Staines in Middlesex.
Just a few months ago was the 1 year anniversary of when the OiNK admin was arrested and the website was taken down by Interpol.
The IFPI labelled OiNK as the primary source for online copyright infringement and hailed the takedown as a major victory for the fight against so-called online theft.
The takedown was certainly a dramatic turn of events, but there is one thing that the takedown failed to do above all else – deter the masses away from private Bittorrent sites, let alone general file-sharing. Since then, several private BitTorrent websites, one of the more notable ones being Waffles.fm, started up to fill the void in similar fashion to whenever a scene release group is busted – someone eventually always fills the void left behind to pick up where the predecessor left off.
Correction: The uploaders entered a plea, but not the administrator.
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Google+.
