Torrent site OiNK sent to the slaughter, one arrested

Think of the industry crackdown on music piracy as Prohibition and OiNK as one of the world's most notorious speakeasies. With over 180,000 users across the globe, this little piggy routinely went to the black market to leak major albums before their official release dates. To be sure, it wasn't a Napster-sized phenomenon. But OiNK's membership roster included a great number of bloggers and other musical opinion-shapers. So the blogosphere basically had a collective seizure this morning when the following message appeared on the OiNK homepage:

"This site has been closed as a result of a criminal investigation by IFPI, BPI, Cleveland Police and the Fiscal Investigation Unit of the Dutch Police (FIOD ECD) into suspected illegal music distribution.

A criminal investigation continues into the identities and activities of the site's users"

Ahhhh! The fuzz!

"Time to buy a new hard drive and install everything and dump the old one, in case you get subpoena'd. Or buy copies of your entire library," advised user Clamps in response to Stereogum's article on the crackdown.

But slow down a minute... just who in the world are those acronyms behind the investigation? Here's a little primer on the IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry), an organization sworn to uphold the world's sacred anti-piracy laws. Together with the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), IFPI had been investigating OiNK for the past two years.

Today, British and Dutch police raided the home of a 24-year-old man in Middlesbrough, England, who is allegedly the site's admin. Interpol (which coordinated the sting) also seized the website's servers in Amsterdam. As we've come to expect from them, the folks at The Daily Swam are all over this story, posting plenty of updates and providing a link to BBC-shot video of the actual raid.

"Pre-release leaks are one of the most damaging forms of Internet piracy that is currently eroding legitimate sales of music across the world," said the IFPI via a press release, citing a 33% drop in recorded music sales over the past six years.

“OiNK was central to the illegal distribution of pre-release music online," said Jeremy Banks, Head of the IFPI’s Internet Anti-Piracy Unit, in the same press release. "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."

OiNK essentially operated as an exclusive subscription service: people with plenty of music to share were invited and swapped with other users, amassing a mountainous database of illegal files. They downloaded, uploaded and distributed songs via blogs and other websites, making OiNK one of the most active - and powerful - filesharing networks on the Internet. Now, like the gin joint of yore, it's been shut down, continuing the testy, cat-and-mouse game between file traders and the organizations out to protect musical copyright law.

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