Former OiNK user gets arrested

According to TorrentFreak, British police have arrested a former user of the private torrent tracker OiNK for uploading and seeding a single album. There was word that police are currently questioning others and more arrests seem likely.

The popular tracker was shutdown in late 2007, and the British authorities made the claim that they would be investigating, not anti-piracy agencies such as the RIAA, MPAA, or BREIN. Until today though, no one has been charged with anything, that even includes OiNK founder and admin Alan Ellis.

The man arrested, who was from the Cheshire area, was questioned and later released on police bail. He has no prior convictions or arrests and is in trouble for uploading a single album early last year.

The bigger questions however, are why the arrest happened now, for such a trivial user, and whether the charges will stick. There was no commercial gain for the user, and his only crime may be that the album was a pre-release, meaning it hit the Internet days or weeks before the actual street date.

We will keep you updated.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 31 May 2008 18:47

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14 comments

5fdpfan

Compared to others who upload stuff this guy's crime is what I'd consider the equivalent of stealing a loaf of bread. What a complete waste time and money persuing this guy.

31.5.2008 19:23 #1

mspurloc

People in the UK are dying every day because the law-abiding citizens aren't allowed to defend themselves, and because the cops are playing games with trivia like this instead of defending people from home invasion.
Typical. No wonder 80 percent of Britons want Labour sent packing.

31.5.2008 21:26 #2

21Q

Originally posted by 5fdpfan: Compared to others who upload stuff this guy's crime is what I'd consider the equivalent of stealing a loaf of bread.ROFL Yes indeed. Considering all of the many programs, movies, books, and other random things found on there he's proly just a drop in the bucket. BUT, then again, it is because of him that many others where able to steal. So it's kind of so so.

31.5.2008 21:35 #3

cousinkix

Quote:People in the UK are dying every day because the law-abiding citizens aren't allowed to defend themselves, and because the cops are playing games with trivia like this instead of defending people from home invasion.I've heard this one before! The US left wing party will bring this same BRITISH civilian disarmament policy to the colonies next. If a candidate hails from a big city like Chicago; then guns are just for the army, the police and the politician's own private armies of pistol packing security guards.

Snobby AMERICAN elites believe that they have more rights to arm themselves against marauding criminals and home invasions. It sounds like you have the same kind of jerks in England too. Our police are also hung up on non-violent offenders...

1.6.2008 01:59 #4

faqman98

Quote:this guy's crime is what I'd consider the equivalent of stealing a loaf of bread.seeing as how the police can't catch anywhere near all of the offenders I'm guessing that they're just trying to make an example out of him.

1.6.2008 08:34 #5

nobrainer

The thing is that the gatekeepers of media, al a sony, universal, warner and emi don't want independents getting a foot hold and oink could have been a model distribution method with many bands and artists releasing content onto the site FOC, they want all revenue directed through them, just like the amercian oil trade agreement where all oil is only traded in dollars.

oink was a great service and all we can do to protect our culture from being sold out completely by sony, universal, warner and emi, is to boycott all things RIAA/IFPI/BPI.
so

BOYCOTT; sony
BOYCOTT; warner
BOYCOTT; universal
BOYCOTT; emi

So i suppose that Trent will be due a visit sometime soon, you know in the UK a paedophile is given a lesser sentence that IP crime, what's wrong with this world?

Trent Reznor: OiNK Was Better Than ITunes Originally posted by Trent Renznor: I'll admit I had an account there and frequented it quite often. At the end of the day, what made OiNK a great place was that it was like the world's greatest record store. Pretty much anything you could ever imagine, it was there, and it was there in the format you wanted. If OiNK cost anything, I would certainly have paid, but there isn't the equivalent of that in the retail space right now. iTunes kind of feels like Sam Goody to me. I don't feel cool when I go there. I'm tired of seeing John Mayer's face pop up. I feel like I'm being hustled when I visit there, and I don't think their product is that great. DRM, low bit rate, etc. Amazon has potential, but none of them get around the issue of pre-release leaks. And that's what's such a difficult puzzle at the moment. If your favorite band in the world has a leaked record out, do you listen to it or do you not listen to it? People on those boards, they're grateful for the person that uploaded it � they're the hero. They're not stealing it because they're going to make money off of it; they're stealing it because they love the band. I'm not saying that I think OiNK is morally correct, but I do know that it existed because it filled a void of what people want.real artists want to share their feelings and thoughts where as the RIAA, ect wants to get paid which is why the artists get robbed off of by the record companies in every way possible, for taking the ownership of the artists works to screwing them on digital downloads and refusing to pay up royalties, but as we now know what the RIAA, is like are we actually surprised any more by the tactics of sony, universal, warner and emi.

The BPI Are: SONY, UNIVERSAL, WARNER GROUP, EMI.
The RIAA Soundexchange Are: SONY, UNIVERSAL, WARNER GROUP, EMI.
The IFPI Are: The same anti consumer lot as listed above!
The MPAA Are: SONY, UNIVERSAL, WARNER GROUP, DISNEY, PARAMOUNT, FOX.

1.6.2008 09:00 #6

7thsinger

Originally posted by 5fdpfan: Compared to others who upload stuff this guy's crime is what I'd consider the equivalent of stealing a loaf of bread. What a complete waste time and money persuing this guy.More like stealing the heel pieces from a loaf of bread. What a freakin' joke.

1.6.2008 10:16 #7

simpsim1

BitTorrent users are getting loads of grief right now because they are the easiest to target. There is for one, a central server with a log of who did what available once these trackers are compromised. I dare say, that the owner was rather a large fish to fry and that going after the uploaders is much easier than trying to pin a bunch of facilitation charges on Alan Ellis.

Remember too that every downloader on BT is also an uploader, so a mass wave of convictions of (and subsequent civil actions against) hundreds of filesharers is bound to bring a host of publicity for the content industry, which the likes of the BPI will be hoping to use to scare more people off.

As I've said before, BT is not the application to use if you don't want to get prosecuted or caught. The only ways to use it in any way "safe" is to do so via an anonymous VPN connection or via an anonymizing system such as TOR (the latter being slow as hell, but okay for uploading a pre-release copy of that illicit album.

1.6.2008 14:01 #8

ZippyDSM

The media mafias should focus on going after illicit profit and not the end users, they are just biting the hand that feeds them.

1.6.2008 15:53 #9

simpsim1

Originally posted by ZippyDSM: The media mafias should focus on going after illicit profit and not the end users, they are just biting the hand that feeds them.....agreed, but those making illicit profits generally cover their tracks better and are thus harder to catch. It therefore costs the mafias more money to bring them to book. The far more naive end user is cheap to target, provides income for the mafias to fry the bigger fish and helps to scare off the opportunist user.

It's sad that our government spends more money and time prosecuting against property and "Not" crimes whilst violent crimes are still dealt with much more softly. This trend started from earlier monarchial rule times and has since been exacerbated by both right-wing and left-wing politics.

I haven't even started on the media yet. Exactly where should I begin.....?

2.6.2008 02:40 #10

malinki

Seriously, recommending using TOR for torrent usage? You need lining up and shooting. Its remarks like that that lead to the TOR service being far flakier than it currently is. The infrastructure of the TOR network is not, in any way, designed to be used for P2P and never has been.

The people behind TOR even request that you DO NOT use TOR for p2p as it will cash the network to grind to a halt.

You wanna be secure inm your downloading? Either pay for a VPN or pay for binary access - your choice.

2.6.2008 04:40 #11

ZippyDSM

simpsim1

Ya but they an afford to pay the outrageous fines of the media mafia normal people don't have 50K plus to toss around.

GOing after the poor end user is pointless for anythign other than bullieing

2.6.2008 11:13 #12

simpsim1

Originally posted by ZippyDSM:
Ya but they an afford to pay the outrageous fines of the media mafia normal people don't have 50K plus to toss around.

GOing after the poor end user is pointless for anythign other than bullieingYes, but they want to scare the average joe out of the culture of getting stuff without paying for it and they figure that imposing these hefty sums that poor people couldn't possibly afford is the way to do it. Like I said, easy targets. It also gives them a reason to fix prices artificially high by saying that they're catching loads of filesharers, that there's an epidemic, loss of sales blah blah...

Originally posted by malinki: Seriously, recommending using TOR for torrent usage? You need lining up and shooting. Its remarks like that that lead to the TOR service being far flakier than it currently is. The infrastructure of the TOR network is not, in any way, designed to be used for P2P and never has been.

The people behind TOR even request that you DO NOT use TOR for p2p as it will cash the network to grind to a halt.

You wanna be secure inm your downloading? Either pay for a VPN or pay for binary access - your choice.Oops!!

It seems my ignorance got me into trouble again. I was unaware of the thing with TOR and P2P until I looked it up a few minutes ago. I personally don't use P2P myself (I'm more of a Usenet man), but I have made use of TOR and VPNs previously (VPN to test for throttling and TOR for posting to a forum where I didn't want to reveal my IP or location - Nothing illegal I might add, just freedom of speech).

So yes I need lining up and shooting. Fire away!!

2.6.2008 15:20 #13

vudoo

Really Bittorrent is none other than centralized p2p where as your identity is easier to find. More anonymous p2p projects need be developed even anonymous gnutilla. Yes it would be possible to make a tor-like client like gnutilla's Limewire and then have it keep re routing you through different proxies simular to what tor does. This way more people would be willing to share through anonymous p2p.

Hopefully they'll never take down Graboid. Graboid does use News groups and it is easy to use. I've never tried usenet. I suppose I'm a stick in the mud since it took me a while to get the notion that bittorrent was a more effective way to trade files than other p2p methods. Just don't like that it can be compromised and your identity could end up in the wrong hands.

3.6.2008 18:16 #14

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