Oink's Pink Palace
Encyclopedia
Oink's Pink Palace was a prominent BitTorrent tracker
which operated from 2004 to 2007. Following a two-year investigation by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), and the British Phonographic Industry
(BPI), the site was shut down on 23 October 2007, by British and Dutch police agencies. These music industry organisations described OiNK as an "online pirate pre-release music club", whereas former users described it as one of the world's largest and most meticulously maintained online music repositories. About a month before the shut-down, music magazine Blender
elected OiNK's creator, British software engineer Alan Ellis, to their The Powergeek 25 — the Most Influential People in Online Music list.
Alan Ellis was tried for conspiracy to defraud at Teesside
Crown court
, the first person in the UK to be prosecuted for illegal file-sharing, and found not guilty on 15 January 2010.
BitTorrent community, with about 180,000 members. When closed by the authorities, the site had stored about 200,000 torrent files. One of OiNK's rules was that users could not pay to gain membership to the site, but had an opportunity to donate money to the site. Members were required to maintain minimum upload-to-download ratios, and to have cute avatars
.
OiNK placed an emphasis on the sharing of torrents
for high-quality MP3
and lossless audio formats such as FLAC
, along with other formats such as Ogg Vorbis and M4A. The torrents for E-book
s, computer software, and e-learning
videos were also routinely shared amongst OiNK's users.
Following a joint operation codenamed Operation Ark Royal, between Interpol
, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), the British Phonographic Industry
(BPI), and some other organisations, on 23 October 2007 the site was closed. The site's creator, Alan Ellis, was arrested by British police, and Dutch police confiscated OiNK's hosting service company NForce's servers. The e-mail addresses of the site's members were not encrypted and were therefore available to the authorities, however, members' passwords were only stored as a salted
md5
hash
. Data stored on OiNK's servers was, however, insufficient to incriminate OiNK users.
Jeremy Banks, head of the IFPI's Internet Anti-Piracy Unit, opined that OiNK was central to the illegal distribution of pre-release music, and that the site had leaked over 60 major album releases in 2007. The shut-down was covered in media worldwide mainly based on IFPI, BPI and Cleveland Police's press releases and original BBC news footage of the arrest of Ellis.
The British and Dutch Pirate Parties
issued a joint statement condemning the actions as retaliatory, questioning the ethics of choreographing it and letting representatives of the alleged victims participate in the investigation.
In the days following the arrest, when news sources like Wired
, The Guardian
, and Slyck.com
started fact checking based on internet sources, it was revealed that not everything reported in the mainstream media was entirely correct. Common errors quoted by media were: that OiNK was an extremely lucrative website and made hundreds of thousands of pounds from "donations", which users had to pay to be able to download; that users had to offer new content to the site in order to get invitations; and that the site was centered around the release of pre-released material. The first two claims clearly conflicted with site's written rules and conventions. A counter argument for the third was that only a tiny portion of site's content were pre-released material. TechCrunch
wrote that while links to pre-release albums definitely appeared on OiNK early it was unlikely that the site's members were actually responsible for these releases and claim this shows how poorly the scene is understood.
After OiNK was raided, several new BitTorrent Trackers were set up by former members of the site.
On 12 September 2008 five of the six members of OiNK who had previously been arrested were charged with copyright infringement
. The sixth, OiNK's administrator Alan Ellis, had bail extended four times until 10 September 2008, when he was finally charged with conspiracy to defraud. A hearing was held at a magistrates' court on 24 September 2008.
On September 24 Ellis's case, along with the case of one of the former OiNK members charged with copyright infringement, were referred to the Crown Court sitting at Middlesbrough
, with the next hearing scheduled for October 2, 2008, but the conspiracy to defraud case was adjourned until 14 November 2008 at Teesside Crown Court. It was then adjourned again until 12 December, then 23 March 2009, then 15 May 2009, and once again until 25 September 2009.
In December 2008 four of the former OiNK members pleaded guilty at Teesside Crown Court, where they were charged with copyright infringement offences. Three were sentenced to a total of 330 hours of community service and court costs of £378 each; the other fined £500. A further defendant, also charged with a copyright infringement offence, pleaded not guilty and was set for trial along with the administrator of the site, Alan Ellis.
On 15 January 2010 Ellis was found not guilty of conspiracy to defraud, with the jury returning a unanimous verdict. Ellis was represented by Morgan Rose, with Alex Stein as the barrister.
The CPS
took the decision to continue the prosecution against the final OiNK defendant, Matthew Wyatt, despite their failure to secure a conviction against Ellis. The matter was due to proceed to trial but, at the eleventh hour, the CPS decided to drop the case entirely. Commentary at the time suggested that this was in an effort to shield the International Federation of Phonographic Industries and the British Phonographic Industry from explaining the methods by which they secured the evidence against Wyatt, as well as the practices of the music industry in general. Wyatt was represented by David Cook of Burrows Bussin. Cook would later go on to successfully represent one of the Defendants from the popular FileSoup forum, acquitted of similar allegations in March 2011.
, founder of Nine Inch Nails
. Reznor said "I'll admit I had an account there and frequented it quite often. At the end of the day, what made Oink a great place was that it was like the world's greatest record store. Pretty much anything you could ever imagine, it was there, and it was there in the format you wanted. If Oink cost anything, I would certainly have paid, but there isn't the equivalent of that in the retail space right now." Reznor justified his membership of the site by saying "they're not stealing it because they're going to make money off of it; they're stealing it because they love the band." Reznor also criticised legal music download sites such as iTunes
, due to "DRM, low bit rate, etc."
BitTorrent tracker
A BitTorrent tracker is a server that assists in the communication between peers using the BitTorrent protocol. It is also, in the absence of extensions to the original protocol, the only major critical point, as clients are required to communicate with the tracker to initiate downloads...
which operated from 2004 to 2007. Following a two-year investigation by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), and the British Phonographic Industry
British Phonographic Industry
The British Phonographic Industry is the British record industry's trade association.-Structure:Its membership comprises hundreds of music companies including all four "major" record companies , associate members such as manufacturers and distributors, and hundreds of independent music companies...
(BPI), the site was shut down on 23 October 2007, by British and Dutch police agencies. These music industry organisations described OiNK as an "online pirate pre-release music club", whereas former users described it as one of the world's largest and most meticulously maintained online music repositories. About a month before the shut-down, music magazine Blender
Blender (magazine)
Blender was an American music magazine that billed itself as "the ultimate guide to music and more". It was also known for sometimes steamy pictorials of celebrities....
elected OiNK's creator, British software engineer Alan Ellis, to their The Powergeek 25 — the Most Influential People in Online Music list.
Alan Ellis was tried for conspiracy to defraud at Teesside
Teesside
Teesside is the name given to the conurbation in the north east of England made up of the towns of Middlesbrough, Stockton-on-Tees, Redcar, Billingham and surrounding settlements near the River Tees. It was also the name of a local government district between 1968 and 1974—the County Borough of...
Crown court
Crown Court
The Crown Court of England and Wales is, together with the High Court of Justice and the Court of Appeal, one of the constituent parts of the Senior Courts of England and Wales...
, the first person in the UK to be prosecuted for illegal file-sharing, and found not guilty on 15 January 2010.
Background
OiNK was an invitation-onlyInvitation system
An invitation system is a method of joining an organization, such as a club or a website. In regular society, it refers to any system whereby new members are chosen; they cannot simply apply...
BitTorrent community, with about 180,000 members. When closed by the authorities, the site had stored about 200,000 torrent files. One of OiNK's rules was that users could not pay to gain membership to the site, but had an opportunity to donate money to the site. Members were required to maintain minimum upload-to-download ratios, and to have cute avatars
Avatar (computing)
In computing, an avatar is the graphical representation of the user or the user's alter ego or character. It may take either a three-dimensional form, as in games or virtual worlds, or a two-dimensional form as an icon in Internet forums and other online communities. It can also refer to a text...
.
OiNK placed an emphasis on the sharing of torrents
Torrent file
A torrent file stores metadata used for BitTorrent. It is defined in the BitTorrent specification.Simply, a torrent is data about a target file, though it contains no information about the content of the file. The only data that the torrent holds is information about the location of different...
for high-quality MP3
MP3
MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...
and lossless audio formats such as FLAC
FLAC
FLAC is a codec which allows digital audio to be losslessly compressed such that file size is reduced without any information being lost...
, along with other formats such as Ogg Vorbis and M4A. The torrents for E-book
E-book
An electronic book is a book-length publication in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, and produced on, published through, and readable on computers or other electronic devices. Sometimes the equivalent of a conventional printed book, e-books can also be born digital...
s, computer software, and e-learning
E-learning
E-learning comprises all forms of electronically supported learning and teaching. The information and communication systems, whether networked learning or not, serve as specific media to implement the learning process...
videos were also routinely shared amongst OiNK's users.
Shut-down and media response
Interpol
Interpol, whose full name is the International Criminal Police Organization – INTERPOL, is an organization facilitating international police cooperation...
, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), the British Phonographic Industry
British Phonographic Industry
The British Phonographic Industry is the British record industry's trade association.-Structure:Its membership comprises hundreds of music companies including all four "major" record companies , associate members such as manufacturers and distributors, and hundreds of independent music companies...
(BPI), and some other organisations, on 23 October 2007 the site was closed. The site's creator, Alan Ellis, was arrested by British police, and Dutch police confiscated OiNK's hosting service company NForce's servers. The e-mail addresses of the site's members were not encrypted and were therefore available to the authorities, however, members' passwords were only stored as a salted
Salt (cryptography)
In cryptography, a salt consists of random bits, creating one of the inputs to a one-way function. The other input is usually a password or passphrase. The output of the one-way function can be stored rather than the password, and still be used for authenticating users. The one-way function...
md5
MD5
The MD5 Message-Digest Algorithm is a widely used cryptographic hash function that produces a 128-bit hash value. Specified in RFC 1321, MD5 has been employed in a wide variety of security applications, and is also commonly used to check data integrity...
hash
Cryptographic hash function
A cryptographic hash function is a deterministic procedure that takes an arbitrary block of data and returns a fixed-size bit string, the hash value, such that an accidental or intentional change to the data will change the hash value...
. Data stored on OiNK's servers was, however, insufficient to incriminate OiNK users.
Jeremy Banks, head of the IFPI's Internet Anti-Piracy Unit, opined that OiNK was central to the illegal distribution of pre-release music, and that the site had leaked over 60 major album releases in 2007. The shut-down was covered in media worldwide mainly based on IFPI, BPI and Cleveland Police's press releases and original BBC news footage of the arrest of Ellis.
The British and Dutch Pirate Parties
Pirate Party
The Pirate Party is a political party in Sweden founded in 2006. Its sudden popularity has given rise to parties with the same name and similar goals in Europe and worldwide, forming the international Pirate Party movement....
issued a joint statement condemning the actions as retaliatory, questioning the ethics of choreographing it and letting representatives of the alleged victims participate in the investigation.
Wired (magazine)
Wired is a full-color monthly American magazine and on-line periodical, published since January 1993, that reports on how new and developing technology affects culture, the economy, and politics...
, The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, and Slyck.com
Slyck.com
Slyck.com is a website dedicated to file sharing. It offers news, reviews, and opinion, and has a user forum.-History of Slyck:Slyck began operations as Slyway.com in 2000, owned by Ray Hoffman. During this time, Slyck was an aggregate news site with some original content. It also had guides to the...
started fact checking based on internet sources, it was revealed that not everything reported in the mainstream media was entirely correct. Common errors quoted by media were: that OiNK was an extremely lucrative website and made hundreds of thousands of pounds from "donations", which users had to pay to be able to download; that users had to offer new content to the site in order to get invitations; and that the site was centered around the release of pre-released material. The first two claims clearly conflicted with site's written rules and conventions. A counter argument for the third was that only a tiny portion of site's content were pre-released material. TechCrunch
TechCrunch
TechCrunch is a web publication that offers technology news and analysis, as well as profiling of startup companies, products, and websites. It was founded by Michael Arrington in 2005, and was first published on June 11, 2005....
wrote that while links to pre-release albums definitely appeared on OiNK early it was unlikely that the site's members were actually responsible for these releases and claim this shows how poorly the scene is understood.
After OiNK was raided, several new BitTorrent Trackers were set up by former members of the site.
Legal proceedings
Between 23 and 28 May 2008 six former members were arrested and questioned, but released on bail without being charged.On 12 September 2008 five of the six members of OiNK who had previously been arrested were charged with copyright infringement
Copyright infringement
Copyright infringement is the unauthorized or prohibited use of works under copyright, infringing the copyright holder's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works.- "Piracy" :...
. The sixth, OiNK's administrator Alan Ellis, had bail extended four times until 10 September 2008, when he was finally charged with conspiracy to defraud. A hearing was held at a magistrates' court on 24 September 2008.
On September 24 Ellis's case, along with the case of one of the former OiNK members charged with copyright infringement, were referred to the Crown Court sitting at Middlesbrough
Middlesbrough
Middlesbrough is a large town situated on the south bank of the River Tees in north east England, that sits within the ceremonial county of North Yorkshire...
, with the next hearing scheduled for October 2, 2008, but the conspiracy to defraud case was adjourned until 14 November 2008 at Teesside Crown Court. It was then adjourned again until 12 December, then 23 March 2009, then 15 May 2009, and once again until 25 September 2009.
In December 2008 four of the former OiNK members pleaded guilty at Teesside Crown Court, where they were charged with copyright infringement offences. Three were sentenced to a total of 330 hours of community service and court costs of £378 each; the other fined £500. A further defendant, also charged with a copyright infringement offence, pleaded not guilty and was set for trial along with the administrator of the site, Alan Ellis.
On 15 January 2010 Ellis was found not guilty of conspiracy to defraud, with the jury returning a unanimous verdict. Ellis was represented by Morgan Rose, with Alex Stein as the barrister.
The CPS
Crown Prosecution Service
The Crown Prosecution Service, or CPS, is a non-ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom responsible for public prosecutions of people charged with criminal offences in England and Wales. Its role is similar to that of the longer-established Crown Office in Scotland, and the...
took the decision to continue the prosecution against the final OiNK defendant, Matthew Wyatt, despite their failure to secure a conviction against Ellis. The matter was due to proceed to trial but, at the eleventh hour, the CPS decided to drop the case entirely. Commentary at the time suggested that this was in an effort to shield the International Federation of Phonographic Industries and the British Phonographic Industry from explaining the methods by which they secured the evidence against Wyatt, as well as the practices of the music industry in general. Wyatt was represented by David Cook of Burrows Bussin. Cook would later go on to successfully represent one of the Defendants from the popular FileSoup forum, acquitted of similar allegations in March 2011.
Notable users
OiNK's user-base included Trent ReznorTrent Reznor
Michael Trent Reznor is an American multi-instrumentalist, composer, record producer, and leader of industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails. Reznor is also a member of How to Destroy Angels alongside his wife, Mariqueen Maandig, and Atticus Ross. He was previously associated with bands Option 30,...
, founder of Nine Inch Nails
Nine Inch Nails
Nine Inch Nails is an American industrial rock project, founded in 1988 by Trent Reznor in Cleveland, Ohio. As its main producer, singer, songwriter, and instrumentalist, Reznor is the only official member of Nine Inch Nails and remains solely responsible for its direction...
. Reznor said "I'll admit I had an account there and frequented it quite often. At the end of the day, what made Oink a great place was that it was like the world's greatest record store. Pretty much anything you could ever imagine, it was there, and it was there in the format you wanted. If Oink cost anything, I would certainly have paid, but there isn't the equivalent of that in the retail space right now." Reznor justified his membership of the site by saying "they're not stealing it because they're going to make money off of it; they're stealing it because they love the band." Reznor also criticised legal music download sites such as iTunes
ITunes
iTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....
, due to "DRM, low bit rate, etc."
External links
- An interview with the site's founder from TelegraphThe Daily TelegraphThe Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
- Squeals of Oink lovers reverberate across the Internet from Paste magazinePaste (magazine)Paste is a monthly music and entertainment digital magazine published in the United States by Wolfgang's Vault. Its tagline is "Signs of Life in Music, Film and Culture."-History:...
- Stationary Hund - The Oink Song from YouTube
- Pirated by iTunes, Artist Benn Jordan Turns to BitTorrent
- Mudd up! Defending the pig - Oink croaks — Writer and musician Jace ClaytonDJ /ruptureDJ /rupture is the pseudonym of Jace Clayton, a New York-based American DJ and producer. He used to play in the drum and bass collective Toneburst, and DJ'ed in Boston during the late 1990s...
explains what Oink was - When Pigs Fly: The Death of Oink, the Birth of Dissent, and a Brief History of Record Industry Suicide — Commentary on Oink in relation to the music industry from an insider Rob SheridanRob SheridanRob Sheridan is an American graphic designer, director, and photographer best known for his extensive work with the band Nine Inch Nails....