Music Industry Wants Another Run At Acquitted Bit Torrent Tracker ‘Oink’

The music industry has vowed to pursue a man cleared of criminal fraud charges relating to his BitTorrent tracker service through the UK’s civil courts.

Last week The Next Web reported that the founder of music tracking service Oink had walked free from a UK court cleared of conspiracy to defraud the music industry. Now the music industry has vowed to continue its pursuit of the man through other legal means.

Alan Ellis, founder of the file-sharing service and the first UK citizen to be charged with music piracy, walked free last week following a unanimous jury decision to clear him of fraud charges.

Now, John Kennedy of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) has confirmed that his organisation is considering a civil action and, as reported in The Guardian, may even consider asking the Musician’s Benevolent Fund charity to write to Ellis requesting a return of the £200,000 he allegedly accrued from ‘donations’ to the service prior to its closure in 2007.

Whilst Oink did not itself host unlawfully copied material it acted as signpost for its members looking for sources of free ‘pirated’ material.

Kennedy claims that “the law is so out of touch with where life is these days”, adding that he “cannot sleep at night when that man has £200,000 sitting in his bank account,” suggesting that Oink story is not over yet.