Huge pirate music site shut down

[gagquin]

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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.

Within a few hours of a popular pre-release track being posted on the OiNK site, hundreds of copies can be found

IFPI spokesman

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).

source

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[dock98]

i have never even heard of that one.i thought i knew most of them.

[LoKz]

omg.... das sad... and who whould run a server in ur own house knowing its dangerouse... lol

[Zeus_Hunt]

i have never even heard of that one.i thought i knew most of them.

Its a closed community.

One has to offer unreleased music to get into the community and keep doing it that to stay...

[LoKz]

that is wack... lol

[Nugstar]

A past member tells me:

Members never had to upload unreleased music, nor pay anything to maintain membership, very few (if any) of the news reports say anything other than what was stated in the IFPI press release. Most of the reports being copy/pastes. The only "payments" made were donations to keep the server/s running.

Becoming a member (in recent times) only required an invite from an existing member of OiNK, no payments. Prior to this, it was simply registration. To remain a member, one only had to maintain a certain share ratio, as with many other torrent sites. Servers were based in Amsterdam, I'm fairly sure not in someone's house.... largely due to the amount of traffic they had.

If you're interested in more about how OiNK operated (membership wise) have a look at the article on TorrentFreak, and the specific comment linked below (comment 134). Alternatively, have a look at the rules that OiNK members abided by using The WayBack Machine, pointing to oink.me.uk

http://://://torrentfreak.com/oinkcd-servers-...#comment-193145

Other sites that are useful include the wiki page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oink%27s_Pink_Palace (ironically it has a wikipedia entry after being closed, despite being a website)

[mustangx]

heres some actual video footage of the raid, not much but a short news clip . http://://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuwwMZKYxag...net/story/13754