Oink Admins Bail Date extended

Wired reports that Anton Ellis, the former system administrator for Oink has had his bail date extended to May 6th 2008. The point that grabs someone’s attention in an otherwise 3 paragraph article is that they state that:

This significantly longer extension could indicate that British and Dutch authorities have realized that the OiNK picture is more nuanced than they had been led to believe by the IFPI and BPI, the anti-piracy organizations who instigated the raid. Source: Wired Listening Post

This could be significant in the process of how bittorrent trackers are perceived in the longer run. If the prosecutor’s office needs more time, then that means the case is not necessarily a slam dunk. The pirate bay has had their own case delayed because of the prosecutor’s office, and no matter how you spin it, even if the Oink admin needs more time to build their defense, the courts are not necessarily there to make it easier on the accused.

The prosecutor might just be happy to grant the extension because they also need more time to develop a case. While the site “TV-Links” has been fairly quiet on the case front, the idea that prosecutors are needing more time, or granting more time to the defendants means that there might be a problem in the system.

This will either drive the IFPI and its counterparts in the USA, RIAA and MPAA to try to get more draconian laws like the Pro-IP act passed, or signal a radical shift between the act and the state of the law. Law has usually been slow to catch up, and deterrents usually do not work as well as they should, as long as there is a reason to do a thing regardless of the state of law they will do it anyways.

More time in this case means that the case is going to be hard won for the prosecutor, and that so far the actual cost of a case is going to far outweigh the cost of what was actually downloaded. Much like the cost break out for the pirate bay.