British and Dutch police have shut down one of the world's biggest sources of illegally-downloaded music.

A flat on Teesside and several properties in Amsterdam were raided as part of an Interpol investigation into the members-only website OiNK. The UK-run site has leaked 60 major pre-release albums this year alone, said the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI).A 24-year-old man from Middlesbrough was arrested on Tuesday morning. The IT worker was led from his home in the town's Grange Road and is being questioned on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud and infringement of copyright law.

At the same time his employer - a large multi-national company - and his father's home were also raided. A Cleveland Police spokesman said: "This extremely lucrative and creative scheme consisted of a private file-sharing website being set up. Membership was by invitation only. "The site allowed the uploading and downloading of pre-release music and media to thousands of members. Members paid 'donations' via debit or credit cards, ensuring their continued access to the site."
Users were only invited to join the site if they could prove that they had music to offer, according to an IFPI spokesman.

Unfinished versions

He said: "They were encouraged to distribute recordings in the torrent file format with other OiNK members, and have to keep posting such music to the site to maintain their membership. "Once an album had been posted on the OiNK website, the users that download that music then passed the content to other websites, forums and blogs, where multiple copies were made. Within a few hours of a popular pre-release track being posted on the OiNK site, hundreds of copies can be found further down the illegal online supply chain."

The site's servers, based in Amsterdam, were seized in a series of raids last week. It follows a two-year investigation by music industry bodies the IFPI and the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). Pre-release piracy is particularly damaging to sales as it leads to early mixes and unfinished versions of artists' recordings circulating on the internet months ahead of the release.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/tees/7057812.stm

just saw this on drudge report.


this seems pretty huge.

Ouch!

Wow, I didn't realize it was a paid subscription service. I just figured it was a collective file-sharing deal. Adding a financial component was pretty stupid on their part, like painting a big bullseye.

giving money was an optional way to build up credit. most people didn't pay with money, but by sharing/seeding, etc.

Of course, because this was a tracker site, the police now have meticulous records of every member's sharing history, corresponding IP address and email address. Sharing illegal files on torrent sites is sort of like wearing a bulls-eye.

Too bad - they had some good shit there. At least I got that mono vinyl rip of Ram before they shut it down.

Yeesh, thank god I never got an invite.

Is it feasable that they'll start going after people now?

This is a big deal of course, but it won't stop leaks happening (obviously). There will just be some other medium by which this type of sharing will take place.

damn this sucks.

if they went after anyone, it'd be the initial uploaders of the material

My first reaction: big deal, I wasn't on oink. But now that I think about it, I relied on members of oink to get the goods and post it here or something. Shit.

ha, if this is true, thank god i never figured out how to upload albums on oink.

Exactly, they do the same when they go after people, sharing unreleased music is the one that you don't want to get hit with.

The saddest part is the last file I grabbed from the site was a Saves the Day album. If only I had stopped with Kylie's new single!

I got the extended Voxtrot discography. Including all the singles. Which ended up being like 29 songs. But not a bad way to end it.

Shoulder to the Wheel > 2 Hearts

I wonder how close we are to someone (government or industry) going after SendSpace, RapidShare, etc., and culling their info for evidence of leaks and general album sharing? I wonder what's left to trace after files expire?

For me, going after file sharing services or newsgroups would have as much of an effect on me as when they went after Napster years ago. Nothing they've done since has affected me.

Seems inevitable. I just grabbed a bunch of stuff last night. What's funny was that I was about 2 days away from dipping below the required ratio and being kicked out. Only their free-for-all holiday ratio boost would have saved me.

How do you think the guys who run indietorrents felt when they woke up this morning? Despite their disclaimer on the main page, they could be next.

Though I've downloaded tons of stuff from Oink, I'm glad I never uploaded a damn thing.

Jeesh.

Indietorrents should be fine. They don't have anything from the major labels. But yeah I was really close to losing my power user. Since I moved into this new apartment my ratio dipped to 1.06. I know, not the worst thing in the world, but it went from a 2.1 or something like that.

Ah, but once you hit ratio watch, you'd still have been able to download 10 more gigs before getting the boot.

God dammit...

eh, Oink banned me like a year ago so whatever, buncha assholes

i never used the site

So here's the new message on oink.cd

This site has been closed as a result of a criminal investigation by IFPI, BPI,
Cleveland Police and the Fiscal Investigation Unit of the Dutch Police (FIOD ECD) into
suspected illegal music distribution.


A criminal investigation continues into the identities and activities of the site's
users

Haha, you guys are fucked!

cleveland police?

Unfortunately I've been using my neighbor's wireless.

Oops.

Yikes, that's a little scary sounding.

Man, I don't like the sound of that.

This happened pretty fast then, didn't it? I downloaded Time Fades Away around 1 AM this morning.

Then you'll be at the top of the list.

All I've downloaded in the last week is Voxtrot. Haha I doubt they'd go after anyone for Voxtrot.

Now's a good time for a board crash.

It was a dawn raid. Probably went off-line sometime between 2am and 5am CDT.

Speaking of them, does anybody have an invite handy? I used to have an account but let it lapse about two years ago.

I'm more devastated about them shutting down tv-links earlier this week.

I don't think anyone actually leaked a record on this board, that's what they care about. Not people who are downloading albums already released, they've lost that battle.

We're sooooo next. The Cleveland Police are on to us, they know the chain.

I wonder which boarder here is a double agent?

Other than the donations, I don't see how Oink was profiting at all. No ads, etc. I'm sure those donations were a good bit of cash, but really it went to keeping the servers running... at the end of the day (or before the end of the day, where he was caught), I don't see how the Oink mastermind was making any dough.

And as for the donors...man, they might really have you guys by the balls, then. Bank accounts, credit cards. Yikes.

Even if you never seeded anything, technically you're still uploading - that's the unique thing about torrents. If you have any seed ratio above zero, you're an uploader.

http://soundopinions.org/forum/index.php?showuser=263

I've read otherwise. Sounds like they were pocketing most of it.



How fuckin dumb is that? Whoever donated money deserves to be arrested.

They used a third party site, like PayPal, so I really doubt they have any financial info other than a notation that you made a donation.

Don't worry, it'll take at least 6 months before they figure out what trout means.

I wouldn't be so sure of that. It's really easy to go after the low hanging fruit. And whether or not you uploaded on the site may not come into play. If your share ratio exceeds a certain percentage, but you haven't uploaded anything, I think you're just as likely to get nabbed as those that uploaded. After all, how many times have we read reports of mothers getting slapped with $200,000 judgments for their daughters' or sons' downloading of 10 or 20 songs? It's those people that they like to make examples of, and not just those responsible for initially disseminating the material.

Oh, they know what trout means.

The average person in the USA buys about 2.5 albums a year. In the UK it's 2.8. I'd really like to show them the receipts for the 8 I've bought this month if they came to me (not that I used oink)

Nice add.

But yeah, I always dreamt that if they came after me I would point to the wall of CD shelves overflowing and say "dudes, trust me... you are getting mad paid off me".

it would be cool if the riaa worked like a used record store where you could sell back your used cds for your freedom