Cleveland police initially stated that the charges against Alan would be announced December 2007, but this was soon postponed for two months, only to be postponed again this May. The police did return OiNK’s servers however, but not before they had erased the hard drives.

Today, Alan Ellis was told that his bail date has been extended once gain. Alan told TorrentFreak that the new date has been set for July 28th, an extension of four weeks. As usual, no explanation was given for the delay.

However, the case got a little bit more complicated, after the arrests of six OiNK uploaders in the UK last month. These users, five men and one woman, were arrested under suspicion of “Conspiracy to Defraud the Music Industry”, and taken to their local police station for questioning and required to provide DNA samples and fingerprinting.

In addition, TorrentFreak has received information that an OiNK user from Norway was questioned by the KRIPOS (Norwegian Cybercrime Unit) for his involvement with the BitTorrent tracker. Apart from this single user, there hasn’t been any legal action outside the UK.

At this point, we can only speculate whether the arrests of the users will be used in the case of OiNK admin Alan Ellis, or vice versa. One thing is clear now, the bail date for both Alan and the OiNK users - as we reported yesterday - has been extended till July 28.

With today’s extension, the speculation about potential charges continues. At the moment it remains unclear what evidence the police are trying to find. However, I might assume that they now realize that the initial allegations that the tracker was an organized crime cartel, making hundreds and thousands of pounds, are not true.

This is an article from: TorrentFreak

OiNK’s Bail Date Extended for the 4th Time

When BitTorrent sites get into legal trouble or other pressures force a move to a new location, the speculation begins on the safest place to go.

For instance, would a site bail out of the Netherlands and move to Canada? Is Canada too dangerous now, and would a move to Sweden be more appropriate? What about moving to Ukraine-based hosting like Demonoid or further afield - China or Russia maybe? Inevitably, discussions usually involve ideas of moving sites east, to countries like Malaysia. Fairly high-tech countries like this seem an attractive proposition, particularly given their government’s track-record in failing to do much about piracy.

Given this background, BitTorrent tracker admins with their sites hosted in Malaysia were confronted by a very unpleasant surprise today. An administrator from a well known tracker contacted TorrentFreak this morning with worrying news, he told us: “Malaysia’s government suddenly forced all torrent websites to shut down today until further notice, a complete surprise to torrent admins and the offshore hosting companies in Malaysia.”

The news was given to this and other site admins, via an email from their hosting provider, which indicates the action has been ordered down from a high level. The email informs the admins that their servers have been suspended by the Ministry of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs, under the Copyright Act 1987. As the request came from the government, the host makes it clear they had no choice but to shut down the site. Among the affected sites are Extremebits, Rapthe, Superfundo and several others. According to sources, although torrent sites have been taken offline, other sites dealing in pirate material have also been suspended after the government decided to act on mounting copyright-related complaints.

Prominent Malaysian host Shinjiru confirmed the closures, telling TorrentFreak: “We can confirm that this is accurate. We had enforcement officers from MDTCA visiting the office to confirm the closure of BitTorrent sites hosted on our network. We will comply to all shut down instructions from the local authorities or agencies with warrants or documents.”

Update: Contrary to comments from a site admin, sources close to the situation are saying the shutdowns are limited to a small number of sites and aren’t necessarily part of a wider crackdown, despite government involvement.

This is an article from: TorrentFreak

Malaysian Government Orders Torrent Sites Shutdown