OiNK.cd Servers Raided, Admin Arrested
Written by Ernesto on October 23, 2007The servers of OiNK.cd - one of the most popular private BitTorrent trackers - are raided and the admin, a 24-year-old man from Middlesbrough, is arrested.
The British and the Dutch police both contributed to the investigation that was initiated by the IFPI and the BPI, two well known anti-piracy organizations. The operation was supported by Interpol who coordinated the international cooperation.
According to early reports OiNk’s servers were confiscated in Amsterdam last week. This seems to be unlikely because the site was still fully functional 24 hours ago. The administrator of OiNK was arrested this morning by the Cleveland Police. The BBC reports that his employer and the home of his father were raided as well.
Jeremy Banks, Head of the IFPI’s Internet Anti-Piracy Unit, said in a reponse to the news: “OiNK was central to the illegal distribution of pre-release music online. 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.”
OiNK hosted hundreds and thousands of torrents with over a million peers which makes it more popular than most public trackers. The site was known to be one of the first places where leaked music albums appeared, so anti-piracy outfits such as MediaDefender were keeping a close eye on it.
In July the tracker already changed its name from OiNK.me.uk to OiNK.cd due to “legal” issues with their domain registrar. Unfortunately it now seems that the popular private BitTorrent tracker is in bigger trouble.
developing story…
Previously: BitTorrent Gets More Social with AllPeers
Next: OiNK Investigation Seeks Identities and Activities of Users
595 Responses
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[quote comment="193000"]That’s what you get for making it a private tracker and not giving out invites. I asked for invites several time and you refused. Serve you right. Maybe you should know better next time.[/quote]
your an idiot, thats why it was so good
It’s surely a sad day for music! Oink was great and introduced me to loads of new bands.
Sad news.
O found the site gone around 4:30AM (EST) last night. The wierd thing is the trackers seem to be still up as one of my downloads is still running as i type this and others were uploading hours after the site came down. Hope they have a backup somewhere that wasn’t found yet. If not just wait a few months and they’ll be 100’s of new piggies.
P.s. demoinoid is still up and is a great alternative but i have to use the proxy site to get in.
We will miss you deeply OiNK. :(
[quote comment="193000"]That’s what you get for making it a private tracker and not giving out invites. I asked for invites several time and you refused. Serve you right. Maybe you should know better next time.[/quote]
I agree, good riddance!
oh yeah
whatever happened to good ol fashioned p2p software
Soulseek is still running fine
The people saying it was elitist confuse me. It wasn’t very hard to find an invite to this site at all if you did a bit of asking around, I had 6 invites available before they shut it down. The standards and rules may have been a bit taxing for some (most of my mates were kicked off for crappy ratios) but those rules helped keep it a high quality goldmine for music.
The way it’s being reported as a pay to leech site is a bit off. I bet these guys made bugger all off donations once they’d paid all the server overheads.
RIP Oink.cd I for one will miss you.
Elitist fuckers? …Probabbly :-D
It wasn’t that much effort in to get an invite, was it? Loved OiNK, good luck guys.
Copy of complaint sent to BBC about their article on the OiNK closure/arrests….
This article is factually corrupt and devoid of any journalism. It has simply repeated points from an IFPI press release ( http://www.ifpi.org/content/section_news/20071023.html ) as facts without any attempt to verify their validity. The IFPI is representing the claims of an embattled and outdated recording industry and therefore its claims should be taken with a pinch of salt as it has its own goals and agendas which the BBC is blindly advocating.
Examples of factual inaccuracies :-
“”Members paid ‘donations’ via debit or credit cards, ensuring their continued access to the site.”"
Incorrect, there was no pressure at all on members of the site to donate, and users would not lose their accounts if they did not. By far the majority of the 180000 ish registered users had not donated.
“Users were only invited to join the site if they could prove that they had music to offer, according to an IFPI spokesman.”
Incorrect, there was no pre-requisite for joining the site other than receiving an invite from an existing user.
“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.”"
Incorrect, users do not need to post music to maintain their membership. The site worked on a ’share and share alike’ principle (ratio) where for every X MB of data downloaded, Y MB of data would have to be uploaded. For the layman, the more music you take, the more you have to share back to other users.
“”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.”"
Misleading, digital music sharing isn’t like taking out the source of a drug supply chain. Because people are simply trading information there are hundreds of sources and destinations, to imply that by taking out OiNK the supply chain has been cut is incorrect.
I would like to make an official complaint about the poor journalism shown in this article. I resent reading recording industry propaganda represented as fact.
I was a member for years, never paid a dime, never uploaded a pre-release album, just maintained a 1:1 ratio by uploading when I needed to. To me, they were good people, and gave me access to a lot… so so much good music I could never have got access to otherwise. Oink was practically a public service…with a ratio demand. I wonder if anything else will ever compare, or were these golden days of high quality obscure albums…
yeah the rules gave the torrents unbeatable quality. where else could you find 6 month old torrent still seeded to full capacity
the only rule i didnt get was the ‘cute avatar’ rule :\
A very very sad day. I have widened my musical taste considerably from Oink, and owe Oink and TMT etc much gratitude. I’m really gonna miss it.
from hungary!
Goddamn!
Oink made me discover so much new music. I actually bought quite some stuff that I got off Oink because it was so good. You never hear that in the media don’t ya?
[quote comment="193065"]The cops were really pissed about UK Garage being renamed.[/quote]
Lol mate :D
[quote comment="193115"]Poor Alan.
Here’s some useful legal advice…. as I hacked your PC a few years ago (remember that?) how can the police prove it was you doing anything from that PC and not me? ;)
Why does a great site like OiNK die and some Nazi-infested scumhole like Pedro’s gets to live? Such is life….
P.S. Alan busted and not TMT…. Why just the good guy and not his arrogant cocky sidekick in the stocks?[/quote]
*hugs flacinhell
hahaha it’s fun to see all the jealous people who never got invited, YOU GUYS MISSED OUT HAHAHA SUCKS FOR YOU, oink could not be compared to demonoid or piratebay it was in its own league…
Life is over.
Well, those complaining they couldn’t get on Oink never had one anyway.
awwww no. i’d been a member for 3 months and believe me, it’s difficult to see the hype until you’ve been on the site, it really was the most amazing torrent site i’d ever been on with access to pretty much everything i could ever want.
fortunately, there are so many other amazing torrent sites out there, i just need to get my hands on some invites for some of them :)
BBC Radio 1 report had a claim from a BPI Goon that the OINK admin made hundreads of thousands of pound from the site…. mmmhhhh sounds like more BPI bull to me BUT if it’s true, I have zero sympathy…
I guess thats what the BPI wants to achive by spreading such shite around!
LOL @ 142!!
Sad Sad Day….
This sucks!
Any thoughts about what’s going to happen to Oink’s users?
Sad day for the community and for the good music
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