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Oink closed down...


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BBC NEWS | England | Tees | Huge pirate music site shut down

Huge pirate music site shut down

Police also raided the home of the IT worker's father

British and Dutch police have shut down one of the world's biggest sources of illegally-downloaded music.

A flat on Teesside and several properties in Amsterdam were raided as part of an Interpol investigation into the members-only website OiNK.

The UK-run site has leaked 60 major pre-release albums this year alone, said the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI).

A 24-year-old man from Middlesbrough was arrested on Tuesday morning.

The IT worker was led from his home in the town's Grange Road and is being questioned on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud and infringement of copyright law.

Within a few hours of a popular pre-release track being posted on the OiNK site, hundreds of copies can be found

IFPI spokesman

At the same time his employer - a large multi-national company - and his father's home were also raided.

A Cleveland Police spokesman said: "This extremely lucrative and creative scheme consisted of a private file-sharing website being set up. Membership was by invitation only.

"The site allowed the uploading and downloading of pre-release music and media to thousands of members.

"Members paid 'donations' via debit or credit cards, ensuring their continued access to the site."

Users were only invited to join the site if they could prove that they had music to offer, according to an IFPI spokesman.

Unfinished versions

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.

"Once an album had been posted on the OiNK website, the users that download that music then passed the content to other websites, forums and blogs, where multiple copies were made.

"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."

The site's servers, based in Amsterdam, were seized in a series of raids last week.

It follows a two-year investigation by music industry bodies the IFPI and the British Phonographic Industry (BPI).

Pre-release piracy is particularly damaging to sales as it leads to early mixes and unfinished versions of artists' recordings circulating on the internet months ahead of the release.

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god damn. i absolutely loved that place. i've downloaded over 100 Gb from Oink, and have an amazing ratio too. had been saving up those invites. don't they realise its not going to change anything though?

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where the hell am i going to get vinyl only single b-sides now?? there goes my The Coral b-side collection. :(

err......by caring enough to buy the vinyl ? (if it's that important)...

or are we talking records that are so hard to come by, nabbing them as MP3's is the only option (? in that case...sorry for your loss!)

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err......by caring enough to buy the vinyl ? (if it's that important)...

or are we talking records that are so hard to come by, nabbing them as MP3's is the only option (? in that case...sorry for your loss!)

a mixture of both. and the fact i dont have have a record player in my flat! and that most months im faced with the option of buying cds or buying food to eat.

anyway, what made oink great was the rarity of the stuff it had. some stuff that literally couldnt be found anywhere else on the web with the added bonus of being great quality. something else will take its place, its just going to take a while.

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a mixture of both. and the fact i dont have have a record player in my flat! and that most months im faced with the option of buying cds or buying food to eat.

anyway, what made oink great was the rarity of the stuff it had. some stuff that literally couldnt be found anywhere else on the web with the added bonus of being great quality. something else will take its place, its just going to take a while.

yup, there were some badass vinyl rips from the 70s that you will never ever have the opportunity to buy.

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