Alan Ellis was arrested last October in relation to the site,
which record industry representatives said specialised in making
pre-release albums available for download unlawfully.
Dutch police seized servers in Holland that were alleged to have
been used by OiNK in the same week that Ellis was arrested.
Cleveland police said that charges have been made. "We can
confirm that one man has been charged with conspiracy to defraud
and five others have been charged with copyright infringement,"
said a police spokeswoman. She said that the five copyright
infringement charges are criminal.
"They will appear at Teeside Magistrates' Court on 24
September," she said.
Ellis, 25, is alleged to have been behind OiNK, which was a
members-only network which people could only join if they had music
to share on the network. The site accepted donations from
members.
The International Federation of Phonographic Industries said on
Ellis's arrest that it had spent two years investigating
pre-release music piracy.
"OiNK was central to the illegal distribution of pre-release
music online," Jeremy Banks, head of the IFPI’s Internet
Anti-Piracy Unit said at the time. "This was not a case of friends
sharing music for pleasure. This was a worldwide network that got
hold of music they did not own the rights to and posted it
online."
The five people who have been charged with the lesser charge of
copyright infringement were arrested in June for allegedly
uploading material to the OiNK network, according to reports at
file sharing-related news site Torrentfreak.
