oink gone !! :(

[bosoxfan]

http://www.slyck.com/story1605_OiNK_Busted

In what is being touted as a victory against the "biggest source of illegal pre-release chart albums", the IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) concluded a joint two year investigation that has lead to the dismantling of the popular BitTorrent site OiNK. British and Dutch police coordinated their efforts which led to the arrest of the site administrator in the UK, and the seizure of OiNK's servers in Amsterdam.

[Bovski]

Or the BBC TV Coverage of the bust

http://youtube.com/watch?v=QuwwMZKYxag

[olddays1]

What to use instead of Oink? Brokep from The Pirate Bay lays down a nice list of music related BitTorrent tracker sites to use while the dust settles from the recent closure of the once great "Pink Palace" known as OiNK.

Last week were trying times for music fans in the BitTorrent community after a two-year investigation by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) resulted in the arrest of OiNK's admin and the seizure of the site's servers.

Around since the earliest days of BitTorrent, OiNK stood long after sites like LokiTorrent, EliteTorrents, and others fell by the way side after being targeted by law enforcement. It was home tens of thousands of music fans who could always count on finding a long sought after album or something new to get the pulse going. It was truly an audiophile's paradise.

There is some shed of hope in all this though with news that the world's most famous pirates - The Pirate Bay - are working on an OiNK replacement site to be called called BOiNK. The big difference between the two will also be that the site will unfortunately be public, which will mean that anybody can come along, connect to a tracker and take a look at user IP addresses with minimal effort, making pre-release albums to hot to handle. Plus without requisite share-ratio enforcement there will obviously be no incentive to share and will undoubtedly mean that content selection and download speeds will not even come close to OiNK. What private BitTorrent tracker site do you know of that enforced share-ratios with more zeal than did they?

News of the BOiNK project comes after initially dismissing the notion out of hand, and rightfully so, because thanks to antiquated copyright laws geared for an analog rather than digital age he and his Swedish compatriots have had to pick up the rest of the world's slack.

He writes:

Many people have called me today and asked for comments already. I have lots of e-mail in my inbox about this from journalists that wants my response to it. And most of the e-mails that I’ve got today actually wonder if TPB is going to open a replacement site for Oink.

What it looks like right now? No. I would love for someone else to please do this work this time. Basing everything around one single group that has too much to do already is not good. I’ve talked about the internet as a hydra before, and I do urge people again - start up your own sites. Make lots of them. If there was 100 sites like Oink, none of them would be a so big and easy target as Oink was today. The most important thing for survival is to spread.

He makes a good point in that it's just not fair to have them always be the go-to guys whenever a BitTorrent tracker site's taken down. For the health of the BitTorrent community to be maintained they need to be spread over a variety of countries and different locations.

In any event, until the dust settles from the whole OiNK affair I have reprinted a list of music oriented BitTorrent tracker sites for you to check out and enjoy. None of them will be compare to OiNK of course, but just like a bad break up it's time to move on.

Interestingly enough the OiNK site now links to a similar Google search query under the title "Waffles - These are the waffles that taste really good according to google." Brokep continues with the waffle crazy in his blog post, writing "Waffleswaffleswaffles and jam! Wondering about all the waffle talk? So do we. But piracy is waffles of the 21st century." I'm not sure what the waffle talk is all about, but I do know it's making me hungry.

And speaking of hunger, here's the list of OiNK alternatives.

audionews.ru (Music production)

blackflowermusic.com

btbeat.com

bt.etree.org

btmusic.org

chronictracker.com

deepbassnine.com

dimeadozen.org

djiq.org

filemp3.org

funkytorrents.com

indietorrents.com

kerrazy-torrents.net

libble.com

metal-torrents.com

onemoresolo.net

pj.sidewalkcrusaders.com (Pearl Jam)

punkhc.dyndns.org

punktorrents.com

purelivegigs.com

smithstorrents.co.uk (The Smiths/Morrissey)

stmusic.org

thecellar.afraid.org

themixingbowl.org

thetradersden.org

torrentazos.com

tracker.twee.se

trancetraffic.com

zombtracker.the-zomb.com

exigomusic.org

vipmusic.org

modetrance.com

tranceroute.com

softmp3.org

punkoiska.com

metalbits.org

tracker.gunsnroses.us (Guns ‘n’ Roses)

mullemeck.serveftp.org/jps_beta/ (Japanese/Asian)

nipponsei.minglong.org (Anime OSTs)

tracker.shoegaze.lt/ (Shoegaze, Dreampop)

puretrance.org (Trance)

tracker.jpopsuki.com (J-pop)

zonebits.net (Primarily Danish music)

komodoisland.net

tracker.shoegaze.lt (Shoegaze, indie, post-rock)

proaudiotorrents.org (pretty self-explanatory)

u2torrents.com (U2)


http://www.zeropaid.com/news/9076/What+to+Use+Instead+of+OiNK

[Synbios]

Weird how they think people pay subscriptions to join the site.

I'm pretty sure he just made money through donations.

[Quantum]

Weird how they think people pay subscriptions to join the site.

I'm pretty sure he just made money through donations.

Yeah, I wish journalists would actually do their damn research rather than just reporting to people what the Police stated to them. Should be interesting how it's ruled on, I hope they actually get a judge who has some technical knowledge rather than one who doesn't know what a website is (it has happened).

[bosoxfan]

it really makes you wonder if all news is like this.  we have an "advanced" knowledge of these things so we don't have to worry about being misled, but what if the press is similarly incorrect in areas that we are ignorant of? 

kind of a scary thought.

[olddays1]

 Some info from Oink. Poor guy needs a job.


http://oink.cd/

[olddays1]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/04/oink_admin_bail_extension/

BitTorrent admin's police bail extended (again)
Further delay for milestone OiNK investigation
By Chris Williams

Cleveland police have extended the bail granted to the former administrator of an alleged music piracy site for a second time, in a bid to collect more evidence for a case that could mark a watershed for UK internet law.

Alan Ellis, a 24-year-old IT worker from Middlesbrough, was arrested in October on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud and copyright infringement offences, over his site OiNK's Pink Palace.

A police spokeswoman said today that he had been briefly reinterviewed today for clarifications and granted police bail to reappear on May 6. The extension has been sought to allow more time for computer forensics, she said.

The deadline for investigators to gather evidence and decide whether or not to bring charges was originally scheduled for 21 December. Early in December however, police extended the cut-off to today, 4 February. At the same time the servers were returned wiped to OiNK's Dutch ISP.

Now the reckoning has been postponed again, bringing the total length of the inquiry to more than seven months.

From 2004 until his arrest last year, Ellis ran OiNK as an invitation-only BitTorrent tracker that focused on high-quality music files. It was shut down by a high profile dawn raid on his flat, coordinated with Dutch authorities seizing servers and a search of his parents' home in Cheshire. The swoop was dubbed "Operation Ark Royal".

Since his arrest, Ellis has publicly argued that OiNK merely provided a Google-like indexing service, and cannot be held accountable for the actual music files that the trackers poined to. It's the same defence that's set to be used by the administrators of the Swedish BitTorrent tracker Pirate Bay in their upcoming trial.

If a copyright prosecution is ever brought against Ellis, it would be a test case for a 2003 amendment to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act that states a criminal offence may be committed by a person who "distributes otherwise than in the course of a business so as to affect prejudicially the honour or reputation of the author or director".

It would be a break with the tradition of copyright infringement being a civil matter, but it's been suggested by lawyers the amendment could be taken by a court to include the operators of filesharing trackers or even their users. Ellis himself is clearly aware of the significance of his case. Shortly after the raids he told The Telegraph: "If this goes to court it is going to set a huge precedent. It will change the internet as we know it."

The conspiracy to defraud investigation is likely to be centred on the "hundreds of thousands of pounds" of proceeds from OiNK Clevleand police's press release said they expected to uncover.

Operation Ark Royal was UK police's first raid targeting a filesharing site, and provoked anger online, particularly for its media handling.

Critics accused Cleveland police of allowing itself to be misled by the record industry anti-piracy lobby. In the BBC News report of the raid, for example, Ellis was accused of "illegally downloading music on to his website" and Detective Inspector Colin Green wrongly stated that OiNK users paid subscriptions. ®