Fresh on the heels of yesterday's news about the raid and arrest of the founder of TVLinks.co.uk by British police, comes word that British and Dutch police raided the servers of invite-only public torrent tracker OiNK.cd (formerly OiNK.me.uk) and arrested the site's 24-year-old server admin.
According to the BBC, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) had been investigating OiNK for two years. OiNK's servers, which were located in Amsterdam, were apparently seized during a series of raids by Dutch police and coordinated by Interpol last week, while the site's founder was arrested this morning in the UK. OiNK supposedly had hundreds of thousands of members and hosted a very large number of torrents. According to the IFPI, it was one of the main sources for leaked, pre-release music on the Internet, responsible for leaking 60 major albums this year.
"BitTorrent has fast become the most popular file sharing client, and while the technology is now commonplace, closed criminal networks such as OiNK take time to develop; make no mistake, this operation will cause major disruption to this illegal activity," predicted BPI's Geoff Taylor. "The government is now well aware of the scale of damage this theft causes to music -- copyright theft starves the creative industries of income, which both threatens future investment in artists and vandalises our culture."
The employer of OiNK's unnamed admin, as well as the home of his father, were also raided by British police.
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: British Police at it Again: OiNK.cd Admin Arrested.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.readwriteweb.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1726
TV Links Founder Arrested for Illegal Linking So I guess we're going to have to go to ovguide.com for a listing of tens of other link-aggregate sites. When will we learn? Comcast Practically Admits to Controlling Your Bandwidth Usage. So Read More
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all Read/WriteWeb posts
"Vandalises our culture", gimme a break! Like record companies don't vandalize their consumers enough.
Posted by: Robert | October 23, 2007 7:40 AMI second Robert's statement. I'm just glad Radiohead took the lead to help solve some of this problem.
Posted by: Danilo | October 23, 2007 8:14 AMAs did Nine Inch Nails. Do they really think busting some poor kids running P2P is going to help the SH1T they produce get sold?
Posted by: Jyrki Katainen | October 23, 2007 1:47 PMF the POLICE
Posted by: Deli Canole | October 23, 2007 2:04 PMoink was the only way to find rare ass music. now it's back to mainstream.
f the police is right. artists weren't losing money, rich ass record execs were
Posted by: Uncle Arnold | October 23, 2007 2:06 PMhttp://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1257848079205801223&q=oink+shut+down&total=4&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=3
Posted by: me | October 23, 2007 6:44 PMNote: the comment by Touhami has been deleted due to racist slur.
Posted by: Richard MacManus | October 23, 2007 7:48 PMOink was mainly a place that live and unreleased music was traded. The record companies do not offer these to consumers and there is no other place to locate them.
They are going to shut it down largely becuase someone prereleased some pop culture bullshit.
F the police, they know little and can take this whole escapade and shove it up there fing asses, fing Dutch Bitches
You just wait, they cant stop us....
Posted by: Live Music Connoisseur | October 25, 2007 12:55 PMJust donated $10 to http://oink.cx.la it`s a shame the BBC have spread so many fake rumours I wish everybody gets these news and knows how careful one got to be with what one consumes in the media!
Posted by: Johnny | October 25, 2007 6:19 PMhttp://oink.cx.la/ is a FAKE SITE trying to scam you. DO NOT DONATE!
Posted by: simon | October 28, 2007 8:30 PMoink.cx.la and its subsidary sites remain a scam, even after moving their “launch” 10 days to November 11th. Check their new screenshot if you have any lingering doubts. Behold the magic of MS paint.
Posted by: Michael Peterson | November 1, 2007 2:54 AM