The individuals were charged with copyright infringement and sentenced to fines and community service, rather than custodial sentences the prosecution had been pushing for.

Steven Diprose was sentenced to 180 hours community service, and ordered to pay £378 in Court costs. Michael Myers was told to pay a £500 fine. Mark Tugwell has to undertake 100 hours community service and pay £378 Court costs. The fourth uploader, James Garner was sentenced to 50 hours community service and also has to pay £378 Court costs.

What remains are the cases against one other uploader and Alan Ellis, the administrator of OiNK. Unlike other file-sharing related cases, the charges against Ellis are not related to copyright offenses. Instead, he has been charged with “conspiracy to defraud”.

Ellis’ case was scheduled to be heard today at the Teesside Crown Court, but the session didn’t last long as the trial was postponed till January 2010. Due to the press blackout, TorrentFreak was unable to find out whether a reason has been given for the delay.

The OiNK shutdown was an international operation. Codenamed “Operation Ark Royal”, it involved co-ordinated action by both British and Dutch police forces. IFPI and the BPI, two well known anti-piracy organizations, allegedly assisted in gathering the ‘evidence’ that led to the arrests.

The tracker – which served some 180,000 users including NiN frontman Trent Reznor – was shut down but several replacements took over including Waffles.fm and What.cd. The latter developed a community of nearly 100,000 members and recently celebrated the upload of the 500,000th torrent.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Site administrator Alan Ellis was arrested immediately and eventually charged with conspiracy to defraud. Five others, who were arrested months later, were accused of uploading music to others via the site.

Four of the uploaders plead guilty at Teesside Crown Court last December, where they were all charged with copyright infringement offenses. The four have now been sentenced.

Steven Diprose was sentenced to 180 hours community service, and has to pay £378 in Court costs. Michael Myers was ordered to pay a £500 fine. Mark Tugwell has to undertake 100 hours community service and has to pay £378 Court costs. The fourth uploader, James Garner was sentenced to 50 hours community service and also has to pay £378 Court costs.

For one other uploader and OiNK admin Allan Ellis the wait continues. Their cases have been adjourned and they will appear before court in March.

A source close to one of the convicted uploaders told TorrentFreak in a response: “[The Judge] swallowed the prosecution line completely that initial seeders were causing major damage to the copyright holders, and particularly uploaders who uploaded before the official release date. The fact that all the early uploads were only 1 or 2 days early and that 3 out 4 of the uploaders bought their CDs online did not sway him. All the retailers, quite naturally, denied this.”

We were further told that, if the defendants had not had such good references and strong legal representation, the Judge would have seriously considered a custodial sentence. This ruling, the first of its kind in the UK, will most certainly be used as a precedent for future cases.

Developing story, more info will be added later.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Site administrator Alan Ellis, 25, was arrested immediately and eventually charged with conspiracy to defraud.

Five others, who were arrested months later, were accused of uploading music to others via the site. They were charged with copyright infringement offenses.

Yesterday, all six appeared at Teesside Crown Court in the UK. Ellis faced a charge of conspiracy to defraud, while the others – Steven Diprose, 21, from Staines, London, James Garner, 19, from Winsford, Cheshire, Michael Myers, 34, of Brough in North Humberside, Mark Tugwell, 19, from Caister near Great Yarmouth, Norfolk and Matthew Wyatt, 19, a student in London but originally from Stamford, Lincolnshire – all faced charges of copyright infringement.

Ellis did not enter a plea, and his case has been adjourned until 23 March 2009. The five uploaders entered pleas, and their hearing will continue at a later stage. All five uploaders were accused of making music albums available on OiNK, and according to insider information, at least four of them pleaded guilty.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

During October 2007, Operation Ark Royal achieved its aims. OiNK was shut down in a joint effort by Dutch and British law enforcement, followed by a number of arrests carried out by Cleveland police over the next few months. Site administrator Alan Ellis was eventually charged with Conspiracy to Defraud, while five other users who uploaded just a single album each were charged with Copyright Infringement. One of them earlier told TorrentFreak “I think it’s a sledgehammer to crack a walnut.”

This morning at 09:45 they appeared before Teeside magistrates. The case of Alan Ellis was, as expected, passed on to the Crown Court. Interestingly, one of the five uploaders has to appear at the Crown Court as well, while the other four will reappear before Magistrates Court. These next hearings are set at October 2nd. [updated, 4pm GMT]

In any event, those accused will be confronted with evidence gathered by Cleveland police, who have found themselves surrounded in their own copyright controversy. A little while ago we reported on the reluctance of certain police forces in the UK to buy an appropriate license from the music industry to allow them to listen to radios or other music on their premises. Put bluntly, this means that police forces in the UK without a license, are themselves copyright infringers. At the time we joked that it would be highly inappropriate for Cleveland police to get involved. Seems like it’s too late.

According to GazetteLive, Cleveland police have not bought a license from the Performing Rights Society (PRS). So, while they continue to play music on their premises, they are actually breaking the law.

Deputy Chief Constable Derek Bonnard, sounding very much like he doesn’t want to pay said: “We continue to assess the position and are seeking advice to determine if we are required by law to spend a significant amount of public money, which we consider is better committed to crime fighting, than in this way.”

Hear, hear Mr Bonnard, I agree with you completely. Hopefully the magistrates in Teeside today consider the amount of money spent bringing the OiNK six to court, and come to the conclusion that in this case too, public money is better spent elsewhere, rather than on the interests of the music industry.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

However, the thought of Miss Isabella Barwinska picking up a £16,000 bill from the civil courts recently for sharing one £10 game is outrageous too, but maybe even more so. Miss Barwinska didn’t turn up or defend her case, no-one seems to know why, but for a lot of people facing similar actions, the prospect of facing a legal system they don’t understand and can’t afford to participate in, financial issues are at the forefront of doing nothing about the threatening letters.

These people simply cannot defend themselves and this is why it might make sense to criminalize personal-use file-sharing. In a criminal case if you can’t afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you by the state and you get the benefit of proper justice at least, a right of reply within a proper structure, not grubby threatening letters designed to wear people down.

I’ll let you into a little secret. When people say file-sharing is “as bad as shoplifting”, in the UK that comparison is pretty ridiculous. Many shoplifters are let off with a simple caution and even the most persistent would have to be uniquely unlucky to get fined £6,000 (plus £10,000 costs) for a £10 game. If Miss Barwinska had been caught physically stealing it, a police caution would be likely, or perhaps a very small fine. In the ‘real-world’ she’d need to smash through the storefront with a truck to end up with a fine the size of the one she got.

The other reason why there might be benefits in bringing file-sharing out of the civil domain and into the criminal is because even fairly large-scale commercial piracy on and off the Internet is treated with extreme leniency in the UK.

Last week we reported that the UK’s Hull city council said it had such a massive piracy problem at its biggest market in Walton Street, it had to ban legitimate traders too in order to stamp it out. Well, it seems that a part of this ‘problem’ was one Robert Guiness.

Mr Guiness had been using the Internet to download movies, music and computer games which he then burned onto DVD and CD and sold them at Walton Street market. When the police searched his van and raided his house, they found over 10,000 pirate movies, more than 600 audio CDs, a couple of hundred DVDs filled with MP3s and 283 computer games. He was a commercial pirate and his long-term considered actions certainly contrast nicely with Miss Barwinska’s civil tort involving a £10 game uploaded for one second.

So, taking Miss Barwinska’s punishment as a guide, presumably Mr Guiness should enjoy a minimum fine of 283 games at £6,000 each? Plus the movies and music. Oh boy, Mr Guiness would be in some big kind of trouble if Davenport Lyons had got to him first. Luckily for him, he got arrested by the police instead and had the good fortune of having a criminal trial.

Due to the “exceptional circumstances” in the case (”i’m but a small cog in a big machine guv’nor”), he was given a suspended sentence and walked out of the court a free man. No fine.

Just to be clear, I don’t really want file-sharing criminalized and I certainly don’t want the UK courts jammed full of petty file-sharing cases. For their part, the police don’t even have time to come to household burglaries or car thefts, so we could never waste their time on non-profit file-sharing issues. However, I wonder how many of the UK’s ‘pinball pirates’ would wish they could be labeled a criminal in order to be excused a massive fine, picking up a criminal record in the process but walking away a free person instead? Desperate people will do desperate things – people have committed suicide over smaller debts than this. No-one in financial difficulty should ever have to aspire to criminal status in order to mount a defense, or aspire to a criminal conviction like that of Mr Guiness, in order to be treated with leniency.

But hold on just one moment. What about the OiNK users that are currently the subject of police criminal action for uploading ONE album each. Has petty file-sharing already become a criminal offense? The Crown Prosecution Service seems to think so.

In a country like Britain, which prides itself on its sense of justice and fairness, it can’t be right to have such a huge imbalance in the legal system, where an ordinary single mother of two making a single mistake is treated more harshly than a for-profit criminal like Mr Guiness. Equally, how can one set of file-sharers be the subject of a simple ISP ‘warning letter‘, another pick up a £16,000 bill and others get hauled off to the police station for interrogation, fingerprinting, DNA sampling and subsequent trial, for the same offenses?

It’s crystal clear – to the man in the street the legal system to deal with file-sharing right now in the UK seems just about as clear as mud and maybe, just maybe, it’s time for the government to step and decide once and for all. Should file-sharers be warned, bankrupted or jailed? Don’t forget Mr Brown, there are an estimated 6 million of them. Choose wisely.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Two months later, two of the six alleged uploaders were released from further investigation, but (at least) two of the remaining four have been charged today. The alleged uploaders were charged with copyright infringement for uploading one CD. The “conspiracy to defraud” accusations vanished, as they were not mentioned.

The case(s) will be heard in two weeks at a Magistrates Court, after which there is a possibility that it will be passed onto a Crown court. TorrentFreak had the chance to talk to one of the charged uploaders. “I think it’s a sledgehammer to crack a walnut,” he said. The alleged uploader is convinced that he is being used to set an example.

It is indeed strange that thousands of UK residents get off with a friendly warning letter from their ISP, while the four OiNK uploaders are being charged for doing exactly the same thing. The fact that it is only one CD makes the case even more bizarre.

OiNK was one of the largest private BitTorrent trackers, hosting hundreds and thousands of torrents. The site was shut down in a joint effort by Dutch and British law enforcement in October 2007, based on intel from the IFPI and the BPI, two well known anti-piracy organizations.

The police have yet to release an official statement, so more details about the charges may come available in the coming days. Until then, the BPI told us they can not comment on the case.

Early report, more information might be added

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Cleveland police initially stated that the charges against Alan would be announced during December 2007, but this was soon postponed for two months due to a lack of evidence, only to be postponed another 4 times.

Interestingly, the charges against Ellis are not related to copyright offenses. Instead, he has been charged with “conspiracy to defraud”, further details about the charges are not available at the moment, but are likely to be released in the coming days. On 24th September, the case will he heard at a magistrates court.

Later today there will be more news regarding the charges (if there are any) against the four OiNK uploaders. Initially, six uploaders were arrested on suspicion of “Conspiracy to Defraud the Music Industry”, and other copyright offenses. However, two uploaders were released from further investigation in July.

The OiNK shutdown was an international operation, named “Operation Ark Royal”, and both British and Dutch police were involved. The police acted upon information fed to them by the IFPI and the BPI, two well known anti-piracy organizations who claimed that OiNK was a money machine.

Update: Uploaders are charged.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

There is some good news though, as two of the six – a 19 year old man and a 28 year old women – wont face any further charges, and now go free. For the other four, and Alan Ellis himself, the wait continues. Alan told TorrentFreak that his new bail date is set for September 10th.

Thus far, the police have not replied to our inquiries so it remains unclear why two of the six uploaders have been released from any charges. The uploaders were arrested by detectives involved with ‘Operation Ark Royal’ this May, on suspicion of “Conspiracy to Defraud the Music Industry” and other copyright offenses. No further arrests have been made since then.

OiNK was one of the largest private BitTorrent trackers, hosting hundreds and thousands of torrents. The site was shut down in a joint effort by Dutch and British law enforcement in October 2007, based on inaccurate intel from the IFPI and the BPI, two well known anti-piracy organizations.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Cleveland police, having originally stated that the charges against Alan would be revealed December 2007, extended the bail for another for two months, only to extend it again until May and then again until the end of June.

When they still weren’t ready to charge anyone by this date, they extended bail again until July 28th 2008. However, today, the police have extended the date again for Alan, and the other six arrested in connection with the case.

The six who were arrested, five men aged between 19 and 33, and a 28-year-old woman, were done so on suspicion of “Conspiracy to Defraud the Music Industry”, and other copyright offenses.

Repeated in the mainstream press such as the BBC, these allegations of serious fraud take on a really sinister tone, but the reality is somewhat different. At most these individuals did what an estimated 6 million others do in the UK on a regular basis – they simply shared files. None of the six are accused of anything more than offenses linked to the uploading of a single album each, yet today they will report again to the police, their lives on hold.

Elsewhere today in the UK, will be the characteristic sound of letters dropping through the front door onto the mat. Some people will be getting bills, others direct mail and junk. Some will be getting well wishes on a happy occasion. Others will be opening an unexpected letter from their ISP which claims they have been caught uploading music by the BPI, that they’ve been very naughty and shouldn’t do it again.

After long negotiations between the music industry and ISPs, along with a considerable amount of government ‘encouragement‘, sending out educational letters was considered a proportionate response to the ‘problem’ of file-sharing. Even the disconnection of uploaders was considered draconian, and there is certainly no suggestion of police involvement.

Shouldn’t the six OiNK uploaders be getting a “friendly” letter and a slap on the wrist too?

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Today, Alan Ellis was told that his bail date has been extended once gain. Alan told TorrentFreak that the new date has been set for July 28th, an extension of four weeks. As usual, no explanation was given for the delay.

However, the case got a little bit more complicated, after the arrests of six OiNK uploaders in the UK last month. These users, five men and one woman, were arrested under suspicion of “Conspiracy to Defraud the Music Industry”, and taken to their local police station for questioning and required to provide DNA samples and fingerprinting.

In addition, TorrentFreak has received information that an OiNK user from Norway was questioned by the KRIPOS (Norwegian Cybercrime Unit) for his involvement with the BitTorrent tracker. Apart from this single user, there hasn’t been any legal action outside the UK.

At this point, we can only speculate whether the arrests of the users will be used in the case of OiNK admin Alan Ellis, or vice versa. One thing is clear now, the bail date for both Alan and the OiNK users – as we reported yesterday – has been extended till July 28.

With today’s extension, the speculation about potential charges continues. At the moment it remains unclear what evidence the police are trying to find. However, I might assume that they now realize that the initial allegations that the tracker was an organized crime cartel, making hundreds and thousands of pounds, are not true.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Suspects were taken to their local police station for questioning and required to provide DNA samples and fingerprints. Sources close to those arrested confirm that most accusations relate to the uploading of a single album by each suspect but despite the fact that uploading music is not a crime in the UK if done for no profit, somehow this civil issue had been transformed into allegations of serious crime, with police paying close attention to donations the suspects made to the site, presumably in an effort to find some financial motive.

Rather than the organized crime ring, they were told to expect, the police ended up questioning six regular people, terrified and mortified at being in trouble with the police for the first time in their lives. Eventually all six were released, and bailed to report back to police on July 1st. Alan Ellis himself is due to report on the same date, after his bail was extended not just once, but three times already.

Sources close to case have informed TorrentFreak that those arrested will report to the police next Tuesday and told that their bail will be extended. They will be ordered to reappear before police on Monday 28th July. No reason will be given for the delay in either releasing or charging those accused, but it is likely to increase speculation that the evidence in the case isn’t anywhere near as strong or as damning as the police were led to expect.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

We also discovered that other people had been arrested and deduced from our sources that this police action was taken against alleged pre-release uploaders – those that share before the retail date.

A few minutes ago in an email to TorrentFreak, Cleveland Police confirmed that a total of six individuals were arrested, all in connection with the uploading of pre-release music.

Three of the arrests were made on Friday 23rd May and three more on Wednesday 28th May. The arrested individuals are five men aged between 19 and 33, and a 28-year-old woman.

Suspects were taken to their local police station for questioning and required to provide DNA samples and fingerprints. According to our sources, they were arrested on suspicion of “Conspiracy to Defraud the Music Industry” although this hasn’t yet been confirmed by the police.

We can confirm that at least two of the arrests are for the alleged uploading of a single album. All have been bailed pending further enquiries.

Update: The Register contacted the BPI who gave this statement:

The BPI and IFPI worked with the police in order to close down the OiNK tracker site last October. The illegal online distribution of music, particularly pre-release, is hugely damaging, and as OiNK was the biggest source for pre-releases at the time we moved to shut it down. We provided the information to assist this investigation, but this is now a police matter and we are unable to comment further at this stage.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

It seems the music industry’s desire to paint OiNK as a criminal network focused on the ruination of the music business, has so far led them to direct the police into arresting users who allegedly pre-released albums, i.e shared albums before their stated retail release date. As mentioned in our previous article, there are no laws in the UK which give extra gravity to pre-release cases, but the music industry seems keen to portray this type of copyright infringement as being much more serious. It has been their theme since the day of the original raid and shutdown of OiNK.

Many observers have been questioning for some time now why the police are involved in this case when it’s believed users of the site committed only civilly actionable offenses at best. It’s clear that simple copyright infringement isn’t what the music industry has in mind.

Those accused were visited by detectives involved with ‘Operation Ark Royal’, sometimes accompanied by local police. After identification, they were arrested under suspicion of “Conspiracy to Defraud the Music Industry”, told that they were not alone and that police would be arresting and interviewing more people in connection with the case. Suspects were then taken to their local police station for questioning and required to provide DNA samples and fingerprinting.

During their interview the suspects were asked all about OiNK, their understanding of the purpose of the site and what they did as a user there. The police were also keen to discover if these alleged pre-releasers personally knew OiNK admin, Alan Ellis, which of course – like the majority of OiNK members – they didn’t.

The police have been asking the suspects for their account details on OiNK. The police are in possession of user account names and email addresses registered on the site, but were keen for the suspects to provide their passwords, adding weight to the belief that user’s passwords were successfully encrypted with a salted MD5 hash.

Suspects were then released on bail while the police went to make further enquiries. It is believed that those arrested will have to appear at a designated police station on the same day that Alan Ellis is to answer his bail, July 1st 2008. So far, Cleveland Police haven’t responded to our request for information.

A really nice gesture has been made by the team of solicitors working on behalf of OiNK administrator Alan Ellis. They have offered free legal support to certain arrested individuals.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Would OiNK users really become a target for the police, despite the presumed civil status of sharing music on P2P networks? If so, why?

Right from the start, there has been a concerted effort by various elements of the music industry to portray everyday citizens using OiNK – presumably including the likes of Trent Reznor – as hardened criminals out to ruin the industry. At the time, BPI Chief Executive Geoff Taylor called OiNK a “closed criminal network” and unfortunately this type of comment set the general tone for many follow up news articles.

In reality, OiNK offered no music of its own but was the venue of an unofficial virtual party, where a limited number of people listened to music without fees or charges, in a modern take on pirate radio – but with a twist. If people had some music to share with others then so much the better, they could bring it along, add it to the index (and that’s all OiNK was, an index) and everyone could listen, to see if they liked it too.

Of all things, it was certainly not about money and a large proportion of the members wouldn’t even have considered that sharing music would result in police knocking on the door, any more than as a result of them using YouTube. But knock they did.

Last week Cleveland Police arrested a user of OiNK in the Cheshire area, who was questioned and later released on police bail. It is alleged that the individual – a normal user of the site who has no previous involvement with the police and no criminal convictions – uploaded a solitary album in early 2007.

Furthermore, information suggests that the police will be arresting and interviewing more users in the course of this investigation but at this stage it is unclear exactly who they are targeting and why. A one-off album uploader seems an unlikely target, particularly as legally in the UK, the fact that the album was allegedly pre-released – as opposed to released after retail – means little.

Going on previous cases, uploading (sharing) would be a civilly actionable offense – lawyers Davenport Lyons in the UK are happy to send out bills to those it claims uploaded its client’s games and the police aren’t interested. But for reasons no-one seems to fully understand, the police are involved in this case and have sent a car full of officers to make an arrest at the individual’s place of work, all for sharing a few minutes of music.

Another issue up for debate is the big question mark sitting over the usefulness of site logs. Stats are manipulated all the time for one reason or another and trackers have to rely on a user’s torrent client reporting data correctly. To be anywhere close to proving infringement it is necessary to track the transfer of data from within the swarm by directly receiving data from the uploader. This is fairly trivial, does not require the site logs and importantly should’ve been done at the time the album was uploaded. Why there has been such a huge delay in taking further action is unknown.

Last year saw an unexplained shift in the way copyright actions are dealt with in the UK. Out of nowhere, both OiNK and the popular TV-Links sites were taken down by police action where one would usually expect a civil lawsuit, leaving prominent legal experts intrigued as to the legal basis.

Uploading one album is not the world’s most heinous crime, in fact, unless the UK legal system changed overnight, it’s not a crime at all since there would’ve been no commercial gain for the user. So what route is this investigation taking? What is the significance of arresting this individual and investigating others over a seemingly small civil issue, and why has it taken so long to do so?

As usual, there are more questions than answers. The arrests have started, but it is unknown how many people are involved. We contacted the Police department that was responsible for at least one arrest, however, they did not respond to our inquiries. If you have any information, please contact TorrentFreak here, as we will post an update of the arrests later this weekend.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The site, which closed in December 04, after Hanff and the site’s administrators heard about raids in Holland, was not administered by Hanff, but by some online friends of his. Shortly after this dawn raid by a process server, Hanff -who had just started a new job- appeared on an episode of the BBC show “NewsNight”. The day after it aired, he was fired, for having views on copyright that the company felt were incompatible with its own, and for not disclosing the case.

That was the situation at the end of 2005 anyway. And now, more than two years have passed and he has heard nothing new. Despite the claims in the letters he has received, Hanff doesn’t think the case went any further, and was quietly dropped. “The last thing I had was a letter from the MPAA lawyers with a copy of a motion for a default [judgment]“, he told TorrentFreak. “That was November 2005 , had that motion been granted I should have heard from the courts.” The hearing in question would have been around the middle of December 2005. “I haven’t even received anything from the court about that hearing , which I should have done , so I am sceptical as to whether or not it actually went ahead”

Perhaps the MPAA felt they didn’t need to proceed any more, after all, thanks to the case, Mr Hanff lost his job, and they didn’t have to run the risk of an adverse judgment in court. As has been discussed in the past, the anti-filesharing litigation campaigns seems to be less about compensating the artists, and more about harassment, and manufacturing cases to boost lobbying efforts. It would appear that this is just more of the same , mudslinging in lieu of any actual case. The document received by Mr. Hanff is certainly full of accusations, threats, and exaggerations , something that recently cost a French Lawyer her ability to practice law.

It does bring into some doubt the ability or the desire for the MPAA to litigate outside the cozy confines of the US. It also seems to indicate the way the oink case will go, as it just had it’s bail date extended again, although it is a criminal case, whilst dvdr-core is a civil case. Nevertheless, the extension of the case with no action except the initial accusation does draw the similarities closer.

In the meantime, Mr Hanff has been spending his energies tacking Phorm, the illegal and widespread invasion of browsing privacy to target adverts via deep packet inspection in association with UK ISPs. His dissertation on the subject can be read here.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

TorrentFreak contacted Cleveland Police, but we were told that there was was no one available at the press office who could comment on the bail extension. Most likely, they need more time to gather evidence from the computers, laptop and mobile phones they still have in their possession.

OiNK was considered by many to be the finest BitTorrent music tracker the world has ever seen. The site tracked hundreds and thousands of torrents of the finest recordings, from virtually every musical genre. With millions of peers, it was more popular than most public trackers.

Jeremy Banks, Head of the IFPI’s Internet Anti-Piracy Unit described OiNK differently, and said the site 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,” he said.

Based on information from IFPI and others, Cleveland police claimed that OiNK was a money machine, and that Alan was making hundreds of thousands of pounds. The people who actually visited OiNK, however, know that the site was free to use. This was backed up by Trent Reznor, the frontman of Nine Inch Nails: “If OiNK cost anything, I would certainly have paid, but there isn’t the equivalent of that in the retail space right now.”

The IFPI and BPI did not only feed the police “misleading” information, they also took over the OiNK.cd domain and displayed an ominous message indicating an investigation into the site’s users had begun. These threats were intended to scare former OiNK members, and they succeeded in this until OiNK reclaimed the domain.

With the third extension in a row, the speculation about potential charges continues. At the moment it remains unclear what evidence the police are trying to find, but I assume they have figured out by now that the site is not as evil as the IFPI and BPI wanted them to believe.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Now, according to Silicon, the BPI is teaming up with the IFPI to develop systems to track down unauthorized music sharing on the Internet.

Jollyon Benn, an Internet investigator for the Anti Piracy Unit of the BPI, said that more people than ever are sharing their music collections online because BitTorrent clients are becoming so easy to use. He said: “The latest version of LimeWire includes a BitTorrent client in it and the user interface has got much more friendly. It is opening it up to a lot of people, it all comes down to how easy it is to do these things.”

I’m not sure that the LimeWire implementation of BitTorrent is any easier to use than that of say, uTorrent’s, but it’s certain that the BitTorrent community would only expand when an outfit such as LimeWire introduces its millions of users to the protocol. As more people get introduced to BitTorrent and move away from networks such as Gnutella, the mysterious anti-piracy ’systems’ being developed by the BPI and IFPI come into play, which in reality are likely to be regular file-sharing clients with enhanced logging abilities.

According to Jollyon Benn, the BPI isn’t deviating away from its earlier position of not going after petty file-sharers, setting an informal threshold of around 200 tracks before chasing the sharer. Instead, Benn says that the BPI will be concentrating on “networks sharing hundreds of thousands of tracks” which immediately throws up some questions. Most BitTorrent trackers are located outside the ‘jurisdiction’ of the BPI, i.e not in the UK. Granted, this didn’t stop them working with the IFPI to shut down OiNK in the Netherlands, but of course they managed to convince the British police that some criminal activity had been taking place on the site, in order to obtain the identity of the administrator, Alan Ellis.

Since the authorities still haven’t found anything to charge Alan with – many months after his initial arrest – one has to wonder if the BPI will be so lucky in getting home address details so quickly in the future.

There certainly aren’t many UK-hosted BitTorrent trackers and the number of British BitTorrent administrators running sites located outside of the UK is unclear, but it’s unlikely there are that many. So as everyone scratches their head thinking of who on earth the BPI are talking about taking down, the battle continues, physically and more often than not, psychologically.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Jeremy Banks, Head of the IFPI’s Internet Anti-Piracy Unit described it differently, as he said at the time: “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.”

Among other things, the police claimed that OiNK was a money machine, and that Alan was making hundreds of thousands of pounds. However, everyone knows that OiNK was free to use and this fact was backed up by Trent Reznor, the frontman of Nine Inch Nails: “If OiNK cost anything, I would certainly have paid, but there isn’t the equivalent of that in the retail space right now.”

The IFPI and BPI did not only misinform the police, they also hijacked the OiNK.cd domain and displayed an ominous message indicating an investigation into the site’s users had begun. These propagandistic threats were supposed to scare former OiNK members, and they succeeded in this until OiNK reclaimed the domain.

With today’s extension, the speculation about potential charges continues. At the moment it remains unclear what evidence the police are trying to find, but I assume they have figured out by now that the site is not as evil as the IFPI and BPI wanted them to believe.

To be continued.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

A group of musicians calling themselves ‘The Overdub Tampering Committee’ (TOTC) have just made a rather unusual announcement. For the last 3 years TOTC have been downloading newly-leaked albums from the internet and using them to create new versions of the tracks. They added their own instruments, and used additional production techniques in the style of the original recording, to create a subtle remix of the original.

Within hours, they then re-released the slightly modified albums back onto file-sharing networks and BitTorrent sites such as OiNK and The Pirate Bay. “If you illegally download music on the internet the chances that our work is in your collection is very, very likely! In fact, you might have a whole lot of us!”, they claim. In fact, ‘Polluting’ P2P networks with this music didn’t end the spread. TOTC have seen their works spread as far as radio stations. No prizes for guessing where they got it from.

It all started around 4 years ago, a member of TOTC downloaded an album only to hear that someone had tampered with it in the middle. This got them thinking: “What if this problem got more insidious, subtle, and widespread? What if there was a network of musicians who got a hold of albums right as they leaked, added subtle yet very much additional overdubs all over the album, and then re-leaked it to the internet?” That’s exactly what they have been doing for the past few years.

Even though the group seem to want to ‘pollute’ P2P networks with these ‘remixes’, they also dislike the music industry:

Attempting to police and punish “illegal downloaders” with lawsuits and fines is misguided and, in our opinion, a waste of time. This model treats the music fans as criminals. That’s an insane business model. But we expect nothing less than insanity from large, crumbling corporations. We do not know how the music industry will change in the next few years and we don’t know how a method will arise to ensure that musicians are properly paid for their recorded work. We have no solutions.

TOTC, who are all members of other active bands, say they have even released tampered versions of their own songs, and uploaded them to the Internet. “That was particularly fun for us.” they said. But what is the group’s opinion on file-sharing itself? They say they don’t think it’s wrong and download stuff themselves to test before buying on physical media.

So what was their motivation to do this?

“All we wanted to do was fuck with the treasure everyone’s hunting for to realign everyone’s perspective.”

We contacted TOTC for some additional information, but they haven’t replied so far. The Overdub Tampering Committee manifesto can be found here. (via Idolator)

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Users of What.cd were in for more than a little shock today. Members of one of the OiNK replacement sites started receiving worrying emails from the music file-sharers arch nemesis – the mighty RIAA.

The email reads:

Date: 12 Nov 2007 11:35:46 +0100
Message-ID: <2007111XXXXXXX.XXXXX.qmail@bitient.org>
To: XXXXXXX
Subject: Music Piracy
From: piracy@riaa.org
Reply-To: piracy@riaa.org
X-Originating-IP: [76.74.24.143]
X-Originating-Email: [piracy@riaa.org]
X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service

Dear registered user of the site What.cd,

We have recently been investigating the activities of the users of the site http://www.what.cd/ and we have found that this site exists for the sole purpose of music piracy.

Pirating music is a criminal offence and we believe it should be obvious to you that the results outweigh the benefits – hard working artists won’t be rewarded for their work and will stop producing music, ultimately leading to a severely reduced selection of music both in the shops and for download.

The RIAA had hoped that the disabling by the police of the large illegal music site, Oink.cd, would stop a lot of people from engaging in piracy, as they don’t want to be seen as criminals. However, this appears to not be the case, as two large new sites have sprung up in its place.

This email is the final warning to all of you who were members of Oink.cd and are current members of What.cd. If we find you to be committing any more criminal acts of piracy then we will have to press charges against you, as representatives of the major record companies of
America.

Yours Faithfully,

The RIAA

Worrying, especially as the IP address in the email seems to indicate it really is from the RIAA. Visitors to the What.cd site were then greeted with this message:

This week has been terrible. After we did two code audits and fixed our security issues, our wonderful attackers couldn’t get in (yay!), so they turned to brute force. After having been hit by several port scans and a rather fearsome DDoS attack (traffic reaching almost 80 megabits per second (note: that’s 10 megabytes per second)) our server pretty much went to hell. After an extended downtime (ending a couple hours ago) during which we tweaked firewall settings, etc., we decided that it was safe enough to bring the site back up.

Pretty much immediately after the site came back up we had someone trying to brute force our (well passworded) ssh accounts (they’ve now met the hot burny side of the firewall).

What have we learned from all this? That there is a person or a group of people somewhere that wants us to disappear. We originally thought that the attacks were by bored kids, but whoever was behind the DDoS appears to be much more serious than that. We aren’t going to publicly speculate on who is behind the attacks – we’ll leave that to you guys.

Despite these attacks, we are still up and running, and we hope to stay this way for a very long time. We have plans for this site, and we aren’t going to flush them down the drain just because some people don’t like what we’re doing. The first of our plans involves a very cool freeleech plan, but we’re going to wait until we’re sure the tracker’s relatively stable for
that. For the time being, we’re keeping freeleech on until further notice.

But what about the emails? Is the RIAA really sending them out? If not, then who is and how did they get the What.cd user database? What.cd think they have the answer in a post on their site, replicated on this Pastebin page.

Other sites are already publishing the information above and a quick Google search does indeed reveal some interesting details. Apparently, the person held responsible for the hacking and the RIAA email is only 14 year old and not as much as a threat some believed him to be. The alleged hacker’s date of birth, his hometown, hobbies and much more are detailed on Google.

Before today, he probably enjoyed telling the world about himself on social networking sites too.

He’s also mentioned on this Pastebin page full of haxor code – along with what.cd.

The youth of today….what’s the world coming to?

Update: It appears someone claiming to be ‘biscuit’ offered the database for sale and even threatened to send it to the RIAA. After deciding that he should keep it – for later ‘blackmail’ purposes he hopefully considered this link and realized it’s not worth it, deleted the database and forgot all about it.

Update: biscuit wrote that he’s not responsible for the hacking and claims that the bash log is doctored.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.