OiNK Investigation Seeks Identities and Activities of Users
Written by enigmax on October 23, 2007OiNK, one of the world’s most popular trackers has been shutdown. Now, in the hours immediately following the closure, the site is responding but displaying an ominous message indicating an investigation into the site’s users has begun.
The message currently on the OiNK page is as follows:
Many of OiNK’s users have been enquiring if their details are safe on the site. The message: “A criminal investigation continues into the identities and activities of the site’s users” will not exactly fill them with confidence.
However, everyone in the BitTorrent world will be familiar with the propaganda put out by anti-piracy organizations and many will be familiar with a similar situation a few years ago when the LokiTorrent tracker was closed and seemingly none of the users were tracked down. Fear, uncertainty and doubt - it’s all part of the anti-p2p strategy but it’s hugely doubtful that 180,000 users will be pursued, it’s just not cost effective and most are scattered around the globe.
According to whois.sc, the visitors to the site are split: United States 50.7%, United Kingdom 7%, Canada 6%, Sweden 3.2%, Germany 2.7% and Netherlands at just 1.9%. Although of questionable accuracy, these figures should give at least an idea of the trend on the site.
Clearly the statement on the homepage is designed to scare all the ex-OiNK members back into the record shops and not let them think it’s safe to join another tracker. That strategy has been tried before (You Can Click But You Can’t Hide) and it doesn’t work. Additionally, more and more people are choosing to protect their privacy with VPN services such as VPNTunnel and Relakks, finding that a small investment is worth the peace of mind in the long run.
So who are the players in this OiNK takedown?
Most people know about the IFPI - The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. This organization says it represents the worldwide interests of the recording industry with the backing of nearly 1,500 record businesses in 75 countries. Its main aim is to fight piracy.
The BPI - British Phonographic Industry is similar to the RIAA in the US. It’s made up of hundreds of music businesses and fronted by the ‘big four’ - EMI, Sony BMG, Universal and Warner. Created in 1973, its stated main aim is to combat piracy.
The FIOD-ECD - Fiscal Investigation Unit of the Dutch Police is a worrying inclusion to the list of people involved in the closure of OiNK. FIOD-ECD is a Dutch government agency dedicated to chasing down people alleged to be involved in fiscal, financial and economic fraud - usually major criminals. With these people involved, getting access to records from hosts wouldn’t have proven too difficult - FIOD-ECD are not just another BREIN, they have some serious powers.
People familiar with the ShareConnector and Releases4u cases in the Netherlands will remember the involvement of FIOD-ECD. The case took over 2 years to come to court and the result was a complete failure for them. The admin of ShareConnector got off completely and a couple of small fines (around $350) were handed out to the admins of Releases4U for uploading copyright material. Additionally, FIOD-ECD failed to provide enough evidence to prove ShareConnector was involved in copyright infringement nor enough to prove that either organization was criminal in nature.
Many people will be keeping their fingers crossed that the progress against OiNK mirrors this.
Following a 2 year investigation (or 3 month investigation, depending on the source) which involved Interpol, Police are insisting that OiNK was a pay site. Members were given the option to donate but this insistence that OiNK was some sort of criminal network where people paid to be a member is clearly untrue but it’s likely that this is the reason the real police (as opposed to the ‘copyright police’) and FIOD-ECD are involved.
Jeremy Banks of the IFPI said: “This was not a case of friends sharing music for pleasure.”
Yes it was Jeremy.
Previously: OiNK.cd Servers Raided, Admin Arrested
Next: OiNK Admin Released From Custody
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OMG
OMG
OMG
Looking forward to see how they are going to sue 180 000 users.
Hope OiNK v2 will rise soon… :)
THIS SUCKS.
LoL…They arent going to go after 180k people spread across the globe. They may have power and money, but the legal costs alone to go after 180k individual people would be pointless.
Wow, I just woke up terrible way to start my day, My homepage is now a grey screen of death.
Seems like there will be a jurisdiction problem. All of those organizations are British in nature, and as the authorities so astutely pointed out, the member base is worldwide.
Sav V:
Hello Jeremey. I want to play a game. You’ve spent your life sending innocent people to jail for music downloads, and today you will face retribution. There is a poison in your body. To get the antidote, go online with your real name and get an invite to Demonoid, telling people what you’ve done. You have 5 hours.
I would so buy tickets to see that.
I think this is more of a case of shut down the site and perhaps go after the scene users responsible for uploading all the pre-release material. The press releases keep bringing up the fact that this was a pre-release hub that originated most of the material.
Also, those 180,000 users are worldwide. It seems like this would cost millions and take a long time to go after all the users.
They may single out the people who were dumb enough to donate. And yes, I am included in that number. That gives them a direct link from userid to PayPal or credit card account. I am about as scared as I can be.
While prosecuting these guys for fraud, I doubt they could use any evidence that comes direct from the horses mouth as evidence of wrongdoing.
But Judge, so and so upload over 10TB.
Who says so?
This fraudster right here!
Of course, they could drop the whole fraud angle, but then they’d have to admit to wasting police time, and not just in one country.
Even without the fraud angle though, anything they get from the databases is entirely circumstancial.
Maybe someone uploaded xxGB on torrent xyz, maybe they cheated or someone manually changed the stats. None of it is anywhere near as admissable as downloading an entire copy from a user.
oh teh noes! thats bad… )=
Isn’t there a serial killer somewhere that needs to be caught?
devestating
I cant think of a more popular private tracker and this is a huge landmark for the Anipiracy world.
I hope this doesnt pave the way for things to come…
And as some people have said bring on OINK V2 !
RIP OINK V1 and good luck in court
Totally B***ocks Oink Was FREE to join and FREE to share if the admin did make money from the site it was through the ever so common BT sites, “Server Donation Fund” ;)
I,m not sure if torrent files actually contain copyright material, just a means of contact.
Nah,
serial killers only harm unimportant human beings.
File sharers harm corporation’a profits -> less political “donations”.
lets ddos the anti-piracy :@
..no but seriously, oink :|
I’m gonna go cry now
http://www.stmusic.org for people needing scene stuff
Yea, pay site my ass. You donated if you wanted to to help server costs & site maintenance. As far as I can tell this all is happening in the UK, nothing about the US. WOOT!
Yea, pay site my ass. You donated if you wanted to to help server costs & site maintenance. As far as I can tell this all is happening in the UK, nothing about the US. WOOT!
Lol what’s the big deal all they got is a bunch of ips the same fucking thing they get while sabotaging trackers and logging while they’re on it.
Those no good sons of bitches just try to scare everyone and this is nothing they’ve got there… unless you registered with your real name… and even that is no proof at all.
Don’t let them scare you away that’s all they got laugh in their faces and fuck them!
Last week I bought the last Music CD in my life. That is for sure.
FUCK YOU!!!
OiNK Is Dead, Long Live OiNK.
Myabe the good folks at the Pirate Bay will host pink too…
“This is how it works. Whatever you sink, we build back up. Whomever you sue, ten new pirates are recruited. Wherever you go, we are already ahead of you. You are the past and the forgotten, we are the internet and the future.”
Okay, wtf! Can’t you pay like $20/month or something for your whois information to be not public?
Holy crap, it has him, and couple of the other guy’s information wide open…Address, phone number…No shit it was easy to raid the servers, especially when you have all the information leading to his exact residence.
oink was hands down the best place to find what you need. thanks for all the tunes. in the back of my head i knew it was only a matter of time before it got shutdown. good thing i dled more than i could ever listen too.
Last I checked, it’s not illegal to donate money to websites to pay for server costs. Nowhere on Oink’s site did it say that money was going towards anything but paying costs.
There were also “legal” downloads on the site; live bootlegs from bands that allow trading of their shows, so not all people who threw a few bucks their way were paying for illegal downloads.
Who cares about the scene? Getting scene stuff is quite easy. It’s on nearly every tracker. The private releases were the interesting part.
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