Tibi Puiu
Yesterday afternoon, the famous music torrent tracker OiNK, was shut down, after it’s Amsterdam servers were raided and seized. Also it’s owner, a 24 year old IT worker from Middlesbrough, England was arrested by UK authority and “is being questioned on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud and infringement of copyright law,” states BBC.
OiNK had a pretty large membership of 180.000 users (invite only) and specialized in uploading pre-released albums, often weeks before their official dates. IFPI officials estimated that the torrent website is responsible for leaking over 60 major records only this year.
“OiNK was central to the illegal distribution of pre-release music online,” said Jeremy Banks, head of the anti-piracy unit at the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), which helped in the investigation.
“This was not a case of friends sharing music for pleasure. This was a worldwide network that got hold of music they did not own the rights to and posted it online.”
Piracy is truly a very pestering problem for all record labels out there; fans engaging in illegal downloads hurt both the respective artists and the music industry. Closing down such trackers as OiNK, is definitely a great step forward in the fight against music piracy, but the truth is that it’s a already lost war. Although the arresting of the OiNK mastermind is sure to discourage a few webmasters, there’ll still be a big chunk out there who won’t stop in their activities and those who fall will be replaced by others.
