OiNK Admin Accused of “Ripping Off” Users

[p2p rules]

UK prosecutor says donations, almost $300,000 dollars worth, went directly to Allan Ellis, founder of the much beloved BitTorrent tracker site, and that despite claims that the site was free to join, a $8 dollar fee was demanded in order to invite a friend to the site.

Makepeace said that although membership to Oink was free, but by invitation only, anyone wishing to invite a friend had to make a donation of at least £5 ($8 USD).

zeropaid
O rly I don't remember the person who gave me a invite telling me that they'd paid money to send me an invite to join OiNK.
Wonders what other lies they're going to make up during the trial as true facts.

[GhostShip]

They will tell as many lies as they want as they an afford to litigate ad-infinitum, they only back off when exposed to publicity, like shining a torch on a rats nest.

[Pri]

Truth is that Oink rarely gave out invites. You had to have an exceptionally good share ratio with a lot uploaded to receive one for free. But as the article points out anyone wanting to invite a friend without meeting the above criteria was welcome to pay to receive invites (and many obviously did for him to make 300K).

[p2p rules]

Yea but not all the money that was donated came from people wanting to buy a invite to send it to a friend if they didn't maintain the right ratio or uploaded enough to earn an invite. You earned an invite if you've been a member for 2 weeks, have uploaded 10 gb and maintained 1.05 ratio. if you can't do either of the last 2 you don't deserve to be on private trackers. People donated to help with the cost of maintaining the site, paying for the servers bills etc and as a thank you for offering the services that the private tracker provided.

[Pri]

He shouldn't have mislead people in to believing that they had difficulty paying for the servers when he had 300K saved up

I feel little sympathy for him. P2P should be free, no one should be making money out of it and that is my opinion.

[GhostShip]

The reports I have read dont exactly state he had 300k on tap, merely that the 300k was what has been donated possibly over some years, but your right on one thing, if operating a torrent site is done as more of a moneymaking exercise than as a labour of love such folks should be steered clear of, once he got to 2k in reserve it should have been enough revenue to power his site for some considerable time.

In general we must not take what the monopolist media cartels say as truth in any way when reading news reports, they have been exposed as liars too many times, what would make matters more transparent is if it was made clear firstly whether all that revenue was from donations and secondly whether that was the current amount and not some form of aggregated total generated over many years, then folks can say if he was greedy or not.  

Also not made clear in this report is that the "UK prosecutor" is not one of the normal ones but a hand picked one chosen by the media monopolists using some legal trickery and they will be expecting the taxpayer to pick up the bill as such greedy scum feel is their right, you,ll notice this guy is charged with ripping off folks by asking for donations (a fraud charge), not any actual copyright infringement offence as was reported on the bbc at the time of the raid, are you grasping at straws here fat cats ?  

[]-[êll.Ôñ.ËÀR'][']-[.]

I don't agree with the guy if hes been making fortunes out of this venture (i suspect he has not in all honesty) what i don't get is how they can charge him with fraud when it was up to the people themselves if they donated or not, whatever the amount they gave because they wanted to join not because there arms were twisted.

If the amounts were correct then i guess he was a Vitim of his own success (loosely used) & a lot more donated than first imagined as far as the donations are concerned & in reality he should have closed donations as soon as running costs had been met & used some other criteria for membership... greed can do funny things to people.

That said its not uncommon for sites to accept donations for running costs and it is up to the users if they want to donate or not & this is basically run  on a trust basis...but as i said no ones arms are twisted so fraud i don't call it.... unscrupulous yea if they are making large profits out of it.

I don't tend to believe a word the media monopolists  come out with & i suspect a figure 300k makes them look in a far better light for prosecuting that a couple of k for running costs.

[..Ñøßߥ..]

The facts are:

“No proof was provided that Ellis used any of the donation money to enrich himself.”

http://torrentfreak.com/oink-was-started-to-improve-elliss-programming-skills-100112/

If he was out buying Ferraris and Jaccuzi baths, don't you think the Cartel would have offered something more in court other than hearsay?

[p2p rules]

As the trial of ex-OiNK admin Alan Ellis continues, more details of yesterday’s proceedings have been made public. Ellis told the court that he always held the belief that the site didn’t break copyright law and that if the site’s users acted illegally, then that wasn’t his responsibility.

torrentfreak