Alan Ellis created and administered the site from 2004 until 2007, when it was closed after an investigation by Interpol and the BPI.

The site used to make £11,000 a month, only asking from donations from its 200,000 users. A total of 21 million files were downloaded via the site.

Ellis, who was the first British man to be charged for illegal filesharing, always maintained that his site was no different to Google in that it only pointed people in ...