BobDylan Posted October 23, 2007 Share Posted October 23, 2007 (edited) Huge pirate music site shut down British and Dutch police have shut down a "widely-used" source 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. 'Extremely lucrative' 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." An IFPI spokesman said: "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 followed a two-year investigation by music industry bodies the IFPI and the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). Damnit. Edited October 23, 2007 by BobDylan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cerbaho-WG Posted October 23, 2007 Share Posted October 23, 2007 I was an OiNK member for roughly four years, and it's a damn shame it was shut down. OiNK was THE place for leaked CDs and obscure stuff that is almost impossible to find. The obvious result of this is that all the OiNK members will move to other subscription torrent sites and one day one will get as big as OiNK and the cycle will repeat. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bmags Posted October 23, 2007 Share Posted October 23, 2007 wow i'm so glad i'm not a member anymore. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BobDylan Posted October 23, 2007 Author Share Posted October 23, 2007 QUOTE(bmags @ Oct 23, 2007 -> 03:35 PM) wow i'm so glad i'm not a member anymore. I was a member (until today, I guess) and am pretty disappointed it got shut down. It was probably the best file swaping site ever. But yes, another one will take its place -- and will probably be even better. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bmags Posted October 23, 2007 Share Posted October 23, 2007 QUOTE(BobDylan @ Oct 23, 2007 -> 08:46 PM) I was a member (until today, I guess) and am pretty disappointed it got shut down. It was probably the best file swaping site ever. But yes, another one will take its place -- and will probably be even better. oh no doubt, i'm just worried about potential lawsuits against the members. Granted i didn't have too many albums from there, just stuff that was tough to find elsewhere. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FlaSoxxJim Posted October 23, 2007 Share Posted October 23, 2007 QUOTE(BobDylan @ Oct 23, 2007 -> 04:46 PM) I was a member (until today, I guess) and am pretty disappointed it got shut down. It was probably the best file swaping site ever. But yes, another one will take its place -- and will probably be even better. KNOCK KNOCK!! OPen up, it's the Music Police, we know you're in there!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BobDylan Posted October 24, 2007 Author Share Posted October 24, 2007 QUOTE(bmags @ Oct 23, 2007 -> 04:16 PM) oh no doubt, i'm just worried about potential lawsuits against the members. Granted i didn't have too many albums from there, just stuff that was tough to find elsewhere. I don't think it's very likely they'll open up lawsuits against many members, if any at all. The one's that may become targets are those who've uploaded close to a terabyte of music (which I wasn't even remotely close to) and the people at the top. But with 100,000+ members, it'd be pretty difficult to nail them all, or even 10% of them. And what they're saying about it being a "pay for subscription" site, they're wrong. Yes, donations were accepted by the adminds, but nobody was forced into it. The investigators have very little idea how the site worked. This isn't the first time a big piracy site has been shut down by the Brits... the last time, all they could get out of it was a slap on the wrist and a $300 some fine. And it appears the man they arressted today was already released -- for now. There really is not much they can do about piracy but develop a webpage for MP3's that has very cheap downloads. $15 for a CD is not worth it in the slightest. Nor is iTunes .99 cent song downloads. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Felix Posted October 24, 2007 Share Posted October 24, 2007 QUOTE(FlaSoxxJim @ Oct 23, 2007 -> 05:17 PM) KNOCK KNOCK!! OPen up, it's the Music Police, we know you're in there!! He used to cut my grass, he was a very nice boy. This is the Central Scrutinizer. This was BobDylan's first confrontation with the law. Naturally, we were easy on him. One of our friendly counselors gave him a do-nut and told him to stick closer to church oriented social activities. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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