14 DAY TRIAL // We were recently reporting that the British Government, BPI, Motion Picture Association and six major ISPs have come to an agreement on how to combat illegal file sharing on the Internet. The thing is that most people will receive a letter informing them that they are involved in an illegal activity, which is not much more serious than getting a gentle slap on the hand. Allan Ellis, owner of now shut down tracker OiNK, on the other hand, did not receive a warning letter, but had his bail extended once again, making this his fifth extension.
Six people connected to the OiNK case, three of them arrested on the 23rd of May, and the other three on the 28th of May, have also had their bail extended. No formal charges have been brought against the five men, ages 19 to 33, and the 28 year old woman, but the reason for their arrest is "suspicion of conspiracy to defraud the music industry."
The authorities were originally supposed to disclose the charges brought against Ellis back in December, last year, but that deadline was pushed to the 28th of July 2008, and now it has been once again pushed back. The problem is not with the delay, it is with the way the authorities are handling this issue.
These people did not do anything else but share files online, just like numerous others in the UK that will receive no punishment other than a letter. Ellis and the other six were taken down to the police station where they had to provide fingerprint and DNA samples, and now have to deal with the stress of waiting to see what charges they will have to face (copyright infringement most likely).
OiNK, formerly known as OiNK's Pink Palace, was a torrent tracker that functioned for a period of about 3 years, from the 30th of May 2004 until autumn in 2007. The site, which was visited by millions of users on a daily basis, was shut down on the 23rd of October after the intervention of UK and Canadian authorities. Most users believe it to have been one of the best privately owned music trackers on the web.