oink shutdown by the feds
Brian
7,618 Posts
or whatever they call european law enforcementhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/tees/7057812.stm
Brian
7,618 Posts
Comments
things are starting to get serious.
Fortunately I downloaded enough music from oink to last me a couple years
feels good to use this appropriately.
- spidey
the youth of today have the world literally at their fingertips
<sarcasm> content schmotent, learn how to sell merch folls
I posted a comment on the thread where my album was available asking people who downloaded it to consider buying a copy if they found it enjoyable. That was it; there was no rant against illegal file sharing, no request to remove my album from the site, no threats of legal action, just a request to those who liked the album to buy a copy. What does the site do? They ban me. I guess folks don't like to be reminded that they're stealing from real people.
My favorite (stupid) response to this:
"It's not stealing, it's sharing! It's right there in the name: file-sharing! Since when is sharing stealing?"
I don't think dude was being sarcastic at all, either, which is kind of sad.
Tho, I have to admit. When I was down in Cuba I gave a couple of copies to the locals.
...assuming they own the satellites and cables they funnel files through.
Damn, what an unclassy way for them to react to a classy move on your part.
I'm always happy when folks give out copies in Cuba.
Within hours. In fairness, I joined specifically to comment on the thread offering my album.
I sold your album the other day at the store I work at on occasion.
Good work!
and eff oink for that bs.
http://torrentfreak.com/why_are_the_ifpi_and_bpi_allowed_071024/
Why Are The IFPI and BPI Allowed To Hijack OiNK?
Written by Ben Jones on October 24, 2007
As you have read here already, a joint team of Dutch and British law enforcement were involved in ???Operation Ark Royal???, to take down the music torrent site Oink. This action however, has brought lots of questions, with very few answers. Questions such as ???Why Are The IFPI and BPI Allowed To Hijack OiNK????
The British and Dutch Pirate Parties have issued a joint statement (English/Dutch) condemning the actions as retaliatory, and questioning the ethics of choreographing it, and letting representatives of the victims participate in the investigation. How many times do they let the father of a murder victim work on the investigation of the Murder?
They also condemn the police forces for allowing the presumption of innocence to be discarded, in that the domain of the website, has been effectively hijacked, and replaced by a page insinuating guilt on the part of the site owner. The ???Presumption of Innocence???, better known as ???innocent until proven guilty??? is a cornerstone of law both in the Netherlands and UK. Surely, if anyone should have put a temporary website under the Oink domain, then it should have been the Cleveland police, or the Dutch police, not the record label owners union.
This violation of what should be standard practices brings into question the ethics and procedures of the forces involved. Cleveland police have yet to respond to inquiries, however.
Of further interest is the apparent investigation on the Dutch side by the Investigation Service of the Tax and Customs Administration (or FIOD-ECD for short). This would appear to be in relation to the claimed monies that were paid by users for access to the site, which are known to us here at TorrentFreak as ???voluntary donations???, but then we do our homework. The question does come to be how these criminal investigation groups manage to execute these raids, without first having done any investigation; undoubtedly heads will roll.
Timing is another interesting aspect to this case. Reportedly, the IFPI are upset that the Pirate Bay has acquired ifpi.com. However, it???s a domain they???ve not had control of (at least according to archive.org) since early this year at the latest, and so it???s hard to see how they will be able to have anything done about it, legally. Could this raid then be a retaliatory action on their part, targeting another site rather than the Pirate Bay, who are/were probably expecting some sort of backlash like this?
Whilst claims in the various press releases (BPI, IFPI, Cleveland police) all state that the site was notorious for pre-release music, it???s also relevant to consider the source of that music. According to a 2003 study by AT+T labs into the movie industry, the majority of early releases came from insiders, and its unlikely that the music industry is any different. Indeed, according to ???apathy???, a moderator at music site Economy of Sound, several pre-releases have come from the record companies direct, where they have had the view that ???you just cannot buy that kind of publicity.??? Claims that pre-releases hurt sales are also not found to be based in fact, the Meshuggah album ???Nothing??? was leaked onto the internet, and became their best-seller.
However, perhaps the biggest thing to remember is that private sites store information. Thats how they work, and there is always some saved, in order to run ratios etc. In the end, we???re right back to the question, ???Are Private Torrent Sites Safe??? and it would appear that they are becoming less so as time goes on, irrespective of the law.
This shit was huge.
Will they go after users?
Will the media get the facts straight (It was not a pay site, the owner did not 'download album files on to the site for its users to share', it was not a 'lucrative business' with "180K+ Paid Customers".
Or does the media even care, is the story over as far as mainstream media is concerned?
Will dude get prosecuted and it will it set a precedent... after all torrents are shared by a network of users, the owner of oink just ran a web page.
Perhaps most importantly, what p2p will 180,000 people now flock to? SoulSeek (shit), LimeWire (also shit)? Private hubs (RHKTDeal)? Or will some folks be scared straight and start buying?
I miss OINK because I was constantly checking their top 10's to see what the new ish was each week.
Even legal options like the iTunes store and whatnot have yet to touch the convenience, speed, and selection of a well-maintained torrent site.
But really, for anyone who just wants to swipe new major label releases, all you have to do is google the name of it + sendspace or megaupload.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/25/ninternet125.xml