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What happens when you run one of the largest, "extremely lucrative" networks of invite-only, torrent-based music piracy? Interpol comes knocking at your door. Next thing you know all of your properties, including that covert warehouse in Amsterdam where your server is based, are seized in a raid-like manner. As though you were exporting/importing pounds of Class A drugs.
Last night around 2 a.m. Pacific Standard Time, OiNK was officially taken off the web. By this morning in England, an unidentified 24-year-old from the Northeast English city of Middlesbrough was arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud and infringement of copyright law. With 180,000 some-odd members, OiNK was the largest invite-only, torrent-based website to go down in the music piracy game. Music, programs, audio books, and sheet music were made freely available. Donations were used as means for general upkeep and maintenance of the website and were made possible by paypal. The OiNK community was built upon simple ideas, but it was sophisticated and meticulously organized.
Thanks to the BPI[British Phonographic Industry], the IFPI [International Federation of the Phonographic Industry], the Cleveland [U.K.] police and the Fiscal Investigation Unit of the Dutch police, the masses who used OiNK will, in fact, move elsewhere, continuing one of the most futile, unbounded games of cat and mouse known to mankind.
"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 vandalizes our culture," said BPI's chief executive, Geoff Taylor. "That this individual now faces criminal charges will deter some, but no doubt others will be looking [to] move into this territory, and the authorities must keep up the pressure to deter the digital freeloaders."
Maybe one day we'll put an end to the absurd witch hunt that is anti-piracy. Want results? Try to abstain from treating piracy as though it's an offense tantamount to legitimate crimes like rape, murder, and selling drugs on a wide-scale. Maybe then people will respect your cause and abide by what you deem is right or wrong. Probably not though, you wankers!
