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
149 Responses
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Thanx doorknob why dont u just list all the sites for them so they can index them and get too the rest later.
They wouldn’t do that, LSD. They know it’d be a declaration of war on the net. Furthermore, 100 more would pop up. That’s the name of the game. They can’t control the internet, and they KNOW IT.
i’d bet what ifpi really wanted to do was to get to nforce.nl, that site gotta be like throwing salt in the entertainment industrie’s wounds, in their eyes that is…
Yes d_m_n you are 100% right, the NWO and movement toward one-world-goverment is all for protecting corporate interests and the EU is a step towards that.
The same thing is coming to the US, just google “North American Union” and the “Amero” which is set to replace the dollar… Bush is already meeting with the Canadian and Mexican presidents and passing laws to homogenize the three countries…
Our only hope to stop it in the US is to elect Ron Paul president in 2008.
http://ronpaul2008.com
Long live freedom.
If you don’t think that property can be seized in a civil case check out anton pillar order under canadian law.
People have to remember that the artist is the one being ripped off here and always has. Why did Radiohead release in Rainbows? Because even at $1.00 per album they make a profit. Labels still pay bands 20 cents per album and the artist has to re-coupe their advances from that measley pittance.
This is the last stand of the major labels; knowing they are going down. I am a pro-music and pro-artist person, but it appears the structures of the old industry are falling. The artist will once again re-gain success and exploser through audiences that want to hear their music. Remember we are in a post MTV world and their are very few avenues within the old structure to hear “real” music.
Heh the only way to convince them that this isn’t effecting sales is just boycott music totally ^^
Stick to music that is legally free (say, radiohead).
Then watch those companies squirm as they can’t find anything else to bust. I hate the state of “artists” nowadays anyway… they’re all “bling” and no talent. They earn their quick buck, then drive themselves to ruin.
True music artists are the ones who have to slog it out, go out and actually do concerts, instead of expecting to earn their quick buck releasing albums.
Boycott em.
“Sure, the big companies will tell you that you’ll only hurt yourself, the quality of your entertainment and whatnot - and they are right.” No, sorry, the big companies are not right about this. Just read Brad DeLong’s blog entry “Fake Steve Jobs: The Music Industry Noobs Have Finally Figured Out What We’re Doing” or Steve Albini’s essay “The Problem With Music” (available online). The recording industry has been suffocating art and American public culture for decades.. Every wonder why you don’t hear the Velvet Underground, or the Replacements, of Fela Kuti on the radio? (Payola anyone?) Oink created a community where large numbers of people had ready access to art, and art should be free to the public. (Yes it has to be funded, but there are ways of funding it other than intellectual copyright.) What the recording industry is most afraid of is that people are going to start thinking that all this mindblowing art that’s been recorded over the last 100 years is something they should, as citizens, have a right to hear without having paying a bribe to Guido at Warner Bros. That listening to Public Enemy, or Burning Spear, or Albert Ayler is part of how you begin to understand the avant-garde, or grasp the consequences of racism or imperialism. They’re afraid that people are going to start to recognize that music isn’t “product,” that musicians don’t make it to earn money (as if any of them ever did), that it’s not it’s just property like a television or a spare tire. They want you to be ashamed of stealing art, but art can only be stolen from the public; it can’t be stolen by it. Oink was something to be intensely proud of. It was one of the best public libraries I’ve ever seen. I got a lot of good records because of it, and I shared a lot of good records with other people. That’s not “stealing,” that’s educating.
FUCK THE SCENE, you PARASITE!
[quote]FUCK THE SCENE, you PARASITE![/quote]
That would be ‘parasites’ as “The Scene” is a collective noun.
You, however, are a singular entity so get no ’s’. Retard.
oink was indeed the best music site on the internet bar none!. i just hope the sysadmins made some sort of emergency backup of the site on a weekly basis and stored it offsite, its a long shot but thats all i can hope for, dont think i can handle the idea oink is perm lost.
the USA and the UK have forgot all about presumption of innocence a long time ago. I guess you haven’t been arrested in the last 10 years. I have and the court system is a joke. It’s a hollywood production for the layperson to give the appearance of fairness however the lawyers and the prosecutors ALREADY know what is to happen in EVERY hearing and in EVERY trial. At least, that is how it goes here in the USA. Does the Judge also know the ruling? Possibly but I’m sure that the lawyers and prosecutors discuss in detail what is to happen in trials and hearings. There is no fairness anymore.
[quote comment="194010"]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?[/quote]
It could help but only if you did it properly, with a program which wipes it, puts data on it and wipes it again repeatedly in order to completely scramble it.
I recall from the top10 that other people had upped and downed several TBs
I do believe their is one person (which is a singular noun) promoting “the scene” praying off one sites demise, promoting another. It’s always the complete dumb asses that have to resort to simple grammar edits to make an argument.
Does it really matter? One option is that special interest groups working for the industries lobby legislators and legal arms to do what they want in similar cases. The other option is that they just work hand in hand with them. Either way, they get what they want and they’ll always have more power than you.
You’re a fool if you believe that police of any stripe exist for your benefit. They exist for no other reason than to keep YOU from scaling the walls of the WEALTHY and to beat your ass down if you get out of line and disrupt the lives of those who have power.
The Colder know how to spell “colder”. Let’s not have him distract us from having a real conversation.
of coarse it matters; eventually a system that backs the few(wealthy) will fall.
You know why? Because eventually their are not enough walls to imprison everyone. An interesting fact; the government fears the people in France, but in in other parts of the world; the people fear the Government.
NEVER FORGET OINK!
http://www.cafepress.com/neverforgetoink
and this is exactly the reason why the scene hates p2p..
hoodlum
You, like mny other children seem to place scene rippers on a pedestal, that you think they “hate P2Pers” shows your ignorance. THey get their kudos from P2Pers, without them they would be a few mates swapping tunes-no buzz, no rush, no point. Grow up and open your eyes.
Everywhere I read there were 180000 Oink members. I always thought there were much more people using Oink.
lol idd, the day the music died =[
180000 has to be just current users. There had to be at least double that number. At least.
I’d love for TPB to bring Oink back online. Surely the Oink admin had some kind of back up plan incase he got raided, it’s only ever a matter of time.
Animosity released their cd weeks before it came out on OINK. they had their own account!!!
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