Police smash pre-release music site

Posted on 23 Oct 2007 at 14:12

Police in the UK and Netherlands have closed down a website which offered albums for download weeks before their release date.

The joint operation saw a 24-year-old man arrested during a raid on a flat on Teesside while servers were seized in Amsterdam.

OiNK was a members-only website that offered BitTorrent downloads and was financed by donations from its estimated 180,000 subscribers.

Interpol co-ordinated raids followed an investigation into OiNK by the BPI and IFPI, UK and international music industry organisations.

Jeremy Banks, head of the IFPI's Internet Anti-Piracy Unit, says that more than 60 major album releases have been leaked on OiNK so far this year, making it the world's largest source of pre-release music.

"OiNK was central to the illegal distribution of pre-release music online," says Banks. "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."

BPI chief executive Geoff Taylor claims that the closure of OiNK is a significant blow by the industry.

"BitTorrent has fast become the most popular file sharing client, and while the technology is now commonplace, closed criminal networks such as OiNK take time to develop; make no mistake, this operation will cause major disruption to this illegal activity," he says.

The raids followed a similar event earlier in the week when UK police targeted a site providing links to movie torrents, following an investigation by the Federation Against Copyright Theft.

Author: Simon Aughton

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