The man police believe was behind the OiNK music file-sharing service has been charged with conspiracy to defraud.
Four other people have been charged with criminal copyright infringement over OiNK activity.
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.
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