Man cleared of fraud over file-sharing

Software engineer Alan Ellis, 26, was cleared by a jury at Teesside Crown Court yesterday.

Ellis, of Grange Road, Middlesbrough, said he set up Oink in his bedroom to brush up on his computing skills while a student at Teesside University.

When police raided his home in October 2007, they found almost 300,000 dollars in his accounts in donations from the site's 200,000 members, who had downloaded 21 million files

Mr Ellis, who had a full-time job and ran the site as a hobby, said the donations were to pay for the server's rental and to eventually buy its own server.

Mr Ellis, who was born in Leeds and grew up in south Manchester, said there was no intention to defraud copyright holders.