ONiK Admin Arrested!

[Wizard]

International raids target music piracy site

Tue Oct 23, 2007 11:23am BST

 

By Luke Baker

 

LONDON (Reuters) - British and Dutch police shut down one of the world's largest sources of illegal pre-release music on Tuesday and arrested a 24-year-old man.

 

The raids, in Amsterdam and Middlesbrough, followed a two-year investigation into a members-only Web site, www.OiNK.cd, which allowed users to upload and download albums before their release.

 

An estimated 180,000 members of the site paid "donations" via debit or credit cards, ensuring that they could continue to access the site and its catalogue of music and other media.

 

The site provided access to more than 60 albums before their release this year, according to industry experts.

 

"OiNK was central to the illegal distribution of pre-release music online," said Jeremy Banks, head of the anti-piracy unit at the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), which helped in the investigation.

 

"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."

 

Pre-release leaks have become one of the most damaging forms of piracy for the music industry which is struggling with falling sales worldwide -- recorded music sales have fallen by more than a third in the last six years, the industry says.

 

As opposed to illegal sharing of music after its release, pre-release piracy is seen as particularly damaging because it leads to unauthorised mixes or unfinished versions of artists' recordings appearing on line.

 

Often it is those in the industry, who get promotional or demonstration copies of albums before their release, who are involved in leaking them to Web sites such as OiNK.

 

British police said they arrested the 24-year-old on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud and infringement of copyright law. He was the only person arrested in the raids. Dutch police seized servers and other computer equipment.

 

The shutting down of OiNK comes at a time when artists are themselves experimenting with new ways of distributing their music, sometimes for free over the Internet.

 

Radiohead released its latest album on the Internet and invited fans to pay a donation to download it.

 

Such techniques have frustrated the music industry which is struggling to come up with ways to regenerate revenue.

 

Reuters

 

I'm glad ONiK is gone. Their community was by far one of the worst BT communities I've ever experienced, they even had the nerve to post concert recordings in a lossy format even when it's clearly mentioned it's forbidden by the person who recorded it.

[Bambi]

That sucks......they should have stuck to limewire

[Robert]

I don't agree with what oink did, the artists and companies should be able to gain revenue while the songs are current ones. Their actions help make P2P look bad.

 

However, once the song is over 10 years old it should be available online for free.

[Reaper man]

am I the only one that's actually sad to see it go?

 

I mean it was the only flocking place that actually had high quality music rips, not to mention the rare albums that you just can't find anywhere else. I was actually able to grab a couple that I could only find on oink, and now that it's gone, I don't have that nice, vast resource of yummy MP3s/OGGs/FLACs that weren't 128kbps crap that other users spew out on public torrent sites, which I might add that the RIAA tries to pollute with garbage data...

 

RIP OiNK :<

[Kloplop321]

well, this is the first time I have heard of it, but I think it is seriously wrong to make people pay to download music the person didn't even own. Yes it is illegal free or not, but still, seems sick to me for that.

 

Paying for P2P is just sick, it isn't how things should work.

[Gryph]

I haven't even heard of this site till now. That shows you how out of the loop I am.

[Robert]

Looks like some of the story was a media beatup.

They say you had to pay to get the latest stuff, but apparently that's not so, you could get whatever you wanted for free like any P2P, and the donations really were donations.

 

I had never visited the place, so yeah, I'm not really qualified to comment further.

[Robert]

Now I've heard that www.tv-links.co.uk was shut down - simply for providing links to possibly pirated material.

 

Makes you want to strangle the rich greedy bastards behind this.

[Shoma]

Which Organization has the power to close these sites?

[Reaper man]

Looks like some of the story was a media beatup.

They say you had to pay to get the latest stuff, but apparently that's not so, you could get whatever you wanted for free like any P2P, and the donations really were donations.

 

I had never visited the place, so yeah, I'm not really qualified to comment further.

 

the donations gave you power user status I think, granting you extra features like power search, requests, etc

[OverlordMondo]

I've never heard of the place either, and if so few people have heard about it, was it really that big a problem to begin with?

 

Also, for the record, Radiohead rules.

[Alpha]

In other news, The Pirate Bay has decided to create bOiNK. This is no joke.

 

 

The Pirate Bay is currently working on an OiNK replacement in an attempt to bring the hundreds of thousands of music albums back online that disappeared during the raid. The replacement will be released within a week and on the BOiNK.cd domain.

 

BOiNK will be a little different from OiNK. For instance, the tracker will be public and it will start out with a lot less torrents than OiNK had when it was raided. The success of BOiNK will mainly depend on the former OiNK community, who will be asked to upload their old OiNK torrents.

 

The most important thing about BOiNK is perhaps the message it sends out to the IFPI and the BPI: It shows that that if you stop one tracker, others will pop up days after. It is a hydra. Call it a slap in the face if you want.

 

BOiNK will probably be ready in a few days. People from the Pirate Bay, Mininova, TorrentFreak and even the recently arrested (and released) OiNK admin are currently at The Oil of the 21st Century conference where they are - among other things - discussing filesharing, culture and copyright related issues.

 

BOiNK is a Pirate Bay only project, OiNK and other BitTorrent sites are not involved.

 

In the meantime, please stay away from scam sites that pretend to be related to OiNK. All they will do is take your money and run away. As soon as there’s an approved donation campaign (if there will be any) we will report it here.

[Alpha]

holy moly, I doubt it will be as good as they say oink was, since its going to be on a public tracker.

There is no way in hell it'll be better than ONiK, but they'll definitely give it their best. For example, when SuprNova came back up a few weeks ago, everyone was jubilant with pleasure. Now people ask, "Suprnova? Why would I want to use that site?"

[Reaper man]

as long as boink only allows high quality torrents, I'll be happy...

[Robert]

Yeah, we don't need more poisoned torrents, that for sure.

Not saying that Oink had any, but some places do.