Why Are The IFPI and BPI Allowed To Hijack OiNK?
Written by Ben Jones on October 24, 2007As you have read here already, a joint team of Dutch and British law enforcement were involved in ‘Operation Ark Royal’, to take down the music torrent site Oink. This action however, has brought lots of questions, with very few answers. Questions such as “Why Are The IFPI and BPI Allowed To Hijack OiNK?”
The British and Dutch Pirate Parties have issued a joint statement (English/Dutch) condemning the actions as retaliatory, and questioning the ethics of choreographing it, and letting representatives of the victims participate in the investigation. How many times do they let the father of a murder victim work on the investigation of the Murder?
They also condemn the police forces for allowing the presumption of innocence to be discarded, in that the domain of the website, has been effectively hijacked, and replaced by a page insinuating guilt on the part of the site owner. The ‘Presumption of Innocence’, better known as “innocent until proven guilty” is a cornerstone of law both in the Netherlands and UK. Surely, if anyone should have put a temporary website under the Oink domain, then it should have been the Cleveland police, or the Dutch police, not the record label owners union.
This violation of what should be standard practices brings into question the ethics and procedures of the forces involved. Cleveland police have yet to respond to inquiries, however.
Of further interest is the apparent investigation on the Dutch side by the Investigation Service of the Tax and Customs Administration (or FIOD-ECD for short). This would appear to be in relation to the claimed monies that were paid by users for access to the site, which are known to us here at TorrentFreak as “voluntary donations”, but then we do our homework. The question does come to be how these criminal investigation groups manage to execute these raids, without first having done any investigation; undoubtedly heads will roll.
Timing is another interesting aspect to this case. Reportedly, the IFPI are upset that the Pirate Bay has acquired ifpi.com. However, it’s a domain they’ve not had control of (at least according to archive.org) since early this year at the latest, and so it’s hard to see how they will be able to have anything done about it, legally. Could this raid then be a retaliatory action on their part, targeting another site rather than the Pirate Bay, who are/were probably expecting some sort of backlash like this?
Whilst claims in the various press releases (BPI, IFPI, Cleveland police) all state that the site was notorious for pre-release music, it’s also relevant to consider the source of that music. According to a 2003 study by AT+T labs into the movie industry, the majority of early releases came from insiders, and its unlikely that the music industry is any different. Indeed, according to ‘apathy’, a moderator at music site Economy of Sound, several pre-releases have come from the record companies direct, where they have had the view that “you just cannot buy that kind of publicity.” Claims that pre-releases hurt sales are also not found to be based in fact, the Meshuggah album “Nothing” was leaked onto the internet, and became their best-seller.
However, perhaps the biggest thing to remember is that private sites store information. Thats how they work, and there is always some saved, in order to run ratios etc. In the end, we’re right back to the question, “Are Private Torrent Sites Safe” and it would appear that they are becoming less so as time goes on, irrespective of the law.
Previously: OiNK Admin Released From Custody
Next: OiNK Down, Norwegian BitTorrent Trackers Next
148 Responses (Add yours or TrackBack)
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oink rules, lol tpb took the domain
Because they knowingly were a conduit for pirated copyrighted material, music, software, etc. The people who ran OINK HAD to know some risk was involved, as they were not on the right side of the law by any means.
I similar home page hijacking occurred when the cannabis related website “Overgrow” (OG as its commonly known) was raided and taken down by the FBI (and Canadian equivalent.) As you might suspect a warning page from the FBI sent MASSIVE shockwaves of paranoia thru the disjointed cannabis community……alas nothing ever happened to any of the regular users.
Fear mongering at its finest.
Man OiNK was amazing and it’s pretty depressing to see it go down like this.
OINK FOREVER!!!
I wasn’t aware that a private business is allowed to seize evidence in a criminal case, as seems to be the case with OiNK.cd. Under British law, it would be considered theft. If the record label is indeed controlling the domain, I believe that could also be considered tampering with evidence. Additionally posting a message like that on OiNK.cd would illegally prejudice the jurors against OiNK (if he does go to trial, everything is very unclear on what is going on).
certainly ‘huh?’, the concern is not the actions or their legalities - believe it or not, thats not for an industry body to decide, its for a court of law - but that the proper legal practices were carried through.
People go ‘but she did it’ when talking about Jammie Thomas, and now about this, but the issue is about how the case was done, was it done properly. The thomas case it seems that the jury had both been improperly instructed, and had already been the recipiant of case-related material from the plaintiffs (every time they start a DVD for instance) which is procedurally wrong.
The best thing to remember is, if these cases were so cut and dried, so simple a matter of ‘it’s illegal’, then why is it neccesary for the industry to make extravigent unsupported claims, and distort facts? Clear facts don’t need ‘amplification’.
That is what we also have here, and it sets a bad precident. If you don’t like presumption of innocense now, why would you like it if you were to be accused of a crime, no matter how baseless. It’s called law, it’s based in justice and fairness, and its abuse is something that shouldn’t be tollerated, no matter what the alleged crimes are.
http://www.stmusic.org/
in your paragraphs above, the record labels should be referred to as “alleged” victims; otherwise even this site is presuming OiNK guilty. ;)
Yeah, this is definitely a violation of procedure. It’s also interesting that the placeholder page has the IFPI corporate logo on it, which is even less kosher. They probably installed the placeholder page in full awareness of its illegality, but thought it was worth the risk to scare some people.
It seems they didn’t take over the domain, but the ip the domain is pointing to.
“Less safe”? For whom? From my perspective as a user, private trackers are exactly as safe as public trackers. This is to say, I haven’t been sued yet and know of no real people who have. Real people here being defined as nth-degree friends of a friend, rather than “first name, last name” trumpeted by the media.
Belligerent Engine is wrong for starters. With public trackers, corps such as the RIAA can inquire through your ISP…
However, this is incredible that once again these bull$hit record companies managed to extend their powers beyond that of legal right and manage a massive invasion of privacy…
shit i hope they dont get me ;_;
owell ive nothing better to do than move to sweden i guess….
haha, ifpi.com thanks piratebay ;)
yea oink was great, but my money is on that there will be another site just like it in 6 months. you cant stop the filesharing of music. untill the day comes where all nations are communists and the government controls every aspect of the internet, then there will always be another torrent site.
This is exactly the same thing as if I would accuse any of you guys of murder and the police would allow me to lock up your home and spray KILLER on it… actually in that example the police would give me the spray can and drive me to your house.
No one has been proven guilty up until now and this is how they should be treated.
In any murder case ‘the knife’ (evidence) has to stay with the police… imagine they would just give any kind of evidence to anyone who is asking to get it… this is ridicules. How is that hard to get!?
[quote comment="193940"]Belligerent Engine is wrong for starters. With public trackers, corps such as the RIAA can inquire through your ISP…[/quote]
And as the MediaDefender mails have shown, any private invitation-only tracker is subject to infiltration and IP address snooping just like a public tracker would. Your argument doesn’t exactly counter mine, which only mentions actually getting sued rather than some theoretical possibility.
Please, at least read the comment you’re responding to with some thought.
stmusic.org is run out of a warehouse in LA…
anyone else surprised that the guy that got arrested (OINK) is in shape?
does anyone have an estimate of what the biggest users on oink were sharing? i’m just curious whether or not to start panicking…
i had upped about 230 gigs, and downloaded about 75 gigs.
is it time to wipe my harddrive? would that even help?
well here’s the email and phone of the admin, call him - see if it’s fbi.
storrentstemp@gmail.com
+1.6613102107
It is interesting that it is a few miles between FBI offices, and the FBI classrooms.
ex-oinker, I really wouldn’t even worry. We’ve seen these scare tactics before, and nothing came of them.
[quote]According to a 2003 study by AT+T labs into the movie industry, the majority of early releases came from insiders, and its unlikely that the music industry is any different.[/quote]
To further reinforce this, I’ll add that, years ago (in the Hotline days), I had access to a private server run by, supposedly, someone at Interscope. There were all kinds of pre-release records up there, leaked by their own frickin’ people.
what about canada is it safe there ppl I’m thinking of moving… what if I donated? are they gonna get me?
Jesus… nobody’s going to get you. The only people they go after in these cases are the admins, and they let him go several hours later. Anything else you hear is just propoganda.
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