Wow!(UKPA) ? 4 hours ago
A man accused of running one of the world's largest music sharing websites has been acquitted of conspiracy to defraud.
Alan Ellis, 26, was accused of making hundreds of thousands of pounds from the Oink website, which he ran from his own bedroom.
However, a jury at Teesside Crown Court unanimously cleared the software engineer of the single charge.
Mr Ellis, of Grange Road, Middlesbrough, smiled as the jury foreman returned the not guilty verdict. He declined to speak as he left the court.
He had told the jury that he set up Oink in his bedroom to brush up on his computing skills while a student at Teesside University.
When police raided his terraced home in October 2007, they found almost 300,000 dollars in his accounts and the site had 200,000 members, who had downloaded
21 million files.
Mr Ellis said the money was used to pay for the server's rental and any "surplus" was intended to eventually buy a server.
He added that the website was developed from a free template, which had a Torrent file-sharing facility included in it. It allowed members to find other
people on the web who were prepared to share files - allowing users to get hold of music for free.
Mr Ellis, who was born in Leeds and grew up in south Manchester, studying A-levels in Cheadle, said there was no intention to defraud copyright holders.
He had a full-time job as a software engineer and said administering the site was just a hobby.
The prosecution said he told police officers: "All I do is really like Google, to really provide a connection between people. None of the music is on my
website."
The case was handled sloppily ever since the raid.
