File-sharing utopia and invite-only torrent site OiNK.cd was shutdown by the Cleveland and Dutch police back in 2007. Since then, no users, not even the site's owner, have been charged.
Until now, that is.
The go-to torrent news blog TorrentFreak reports that Cleveland, UK police recently arrested six OiNK users for, according to their sources, “Conspiracy to Defraud the Music Industry.” This essentially means the accused OiNK members were apparently arrested for sharing advance/pre-release albums with ties to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), an affiliate of the RIAA. (The IFPI mostly parties with the major labels, but judging by its extensive list of member sites, the group also expands its protection to indies.)
The British Phonographic Industry provided the following statement (via The Register):
The BPI and IFPI worked with the police in order to close down the OiNK tracker site last October. The illegal online distribution of music, particularly pre-release, is hugely damaging, and as OiNK was the biggest source for pre-releases at the time we moved to shut it down. We provided the information to assist this investigation, but this is now a police matter and we are unable to comment further at this stage.
At this point, it's unclear if more arrests are expected and why British police are involved in this particular investigation but not other file-sharing incidents.
Anyway, if you don't see any news stories from me for more than two weeks from today, then you can safely assume that I've either (a) gotten fed up with Mr P's bullshit or (b) have been caught and incarcerated.
I'm all for option A.
