OiNK closed down...

[Tomkat]

...and a man from Middlesborough arrested!

BBC Story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/e...es/7057812.stm

IFPI's Statement:
http://www.ifpi.org/content/section_news/20071023.html


British and Dutch police have shut down a "widely-used" source of illegally-downloaded music.

A flat on Teesside and several properties in Amsterdam were raided as part of an Interpol investigation into the members-only website OiNK.



If you go to the offending website, http://oink.cd/, it says simply that it is closed and you should go to any news site to find out why.

With 180k members (all criminals!), how many of you are naughty illegal downloaders from that site? On the upside, I guess you don't have to worry about your ratios any more!

[Marv]

Good.

[Mzyxptlk]

Sucks, but life goes on. I'm sure I'll find another place to get my fix.

[Apothos]

That's quite interesting because tvlinks was shut down a few days ago too.

The group's director general Kieron Sharp said TV Links was the first major target in a campaign to crackdown on web piracy.

[Phil^]

Originally Posted by Apothos

That's quite interesting because tvlinks was shut down a few days ago too.

it gets even more interesting when you hear what he was arrested for

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by Phil^

it gets even more interesting when you hear what he was arrested for

The hilarious thing is that it was linked off the beeb the other day, before being shut down partially by... the beeb.

[Mzyxptlk]

Yeah, basically for linking to sites which in turn provide links which then enable you to get video files. From my limited knowledge of copyright law, linking to content is always allowed, let alone linking to links to content, so this would be a very shaky case.

[Marv]

Originally Posted by Mzyxptlk

Sucks, but life goes on. I'm sure I'll find another place to get my fix.

Sucks?

This is a large victory for the average musician.

While we all know that the "big stars" can cope and probably don't notice the loss on earnings that illegal downloads brings them. How do you think the average musician feels when he / she relies on those royalty payments from sales to pay his / her mortgage or put food on their family's table?

If you want an album - go out and buy it or download it from somewhere like iTunes. If you don't want an entire album, buy the bits that you do, again, from somewhere like iTunes & stop ****ing over the average Joe (like me) trying to make a living in the industry to put food on the table.

While the large stars get paid an awful lot, those of us that record their music / set up their microphones / mix their sound so it's actually listenable get paid sod all.

You're absolutely right when you download music that you're not skewing over the star on the front of the album, but you are the countless people who actually get that album recorded / produced and out for you to listen too.

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by Marv

This is a large victory for the average musician.

I'd say it's the opposite. How exactly are people supposed to hear music from Obscure Band #5 through traditional means? I can name large numbers of bands that I only got into through downloading music from the internet (Bad Religion being a good example, as despite being a well known band that have been about for nigh on three decades at this point I had no ****ing clue who they were) that I wouldn't have spent money in other circumstances.

Of course, this presumes that the obscure band in question are actually good (I can name more artists for whom I listened to the album once and then promptly deleted) but I doubt anyone's in the entertainment industry because they think they're crap at it.

That's even assuming that downloading causes any sort of economic damage to the music industry at all, last I checked the drop in sales was consistent with the fall in revenue in other entertainment media.

I have to say that I'm not a musician, but I am a writer - and if one of my scripts gets transmitted then the first thing I'd do would be to send copies to everyone, host it on torrent trackers and the like. Anything that gets more people to hear or see it is a good thing.

[edit]

Last time we had one of these threads I found some research that showed that proportionally more money was going to small artists than large artists since the rise of file sharing.

[Tomkat]

Originally Posted by MrL_JaKiri

(Bad Religion being a good example, as despite being a well known band that have been about for nigh on three decades at this point I had no ****ing clue who they were) that I wouldn't have spent money in other circumstances.

What did you spend money on, once you'd managed to get all their music off the net for free?

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by Tomkat

What did you spend money on, once you'd managed to get all their music off the net for free?

Their CDs? Other merchandise? Going to concerts (although not that last one much, as I can't be bothered to go to London - although it must be noted that the amount of money an artist gets from royalties compared to gigs is absolutely pathetic)? In Bad Religion's case, I own ~12 albums or EPs by them.

The "once you have downloaded something you're not allowed to buy it by internet law" thing is an assumption which is really bizarre to me.

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by horn

i often buy cds of bands i've found on the internet too; mainly because i'm a neurotic faggot who can't fight very well against the feeling that a cd is an artifact containing the true essense of the music/band. the thing is shit loads of other people aren't. around half my friends buy next to no cd's anymore, they just rip mp3s. i know it's just two guys but they probably aren't the only ones.

And I know people who've bought literally hundreds of CDs by themselves after downloading things, on average the industry gains money from our stupid examples!

[Tomkat]

Originally Posted by MrL_JaKiri

Their CDs? Other merchandise? Going to concerts (although not that last one much, as I can't be bothered to go to London - although it must be noted that the amount of money an artist gets from royalties compared to gigs is absolutely pathetic)? In Bad Religion's case, I own ~12 albums or EPs by them.

The "once you have downloaded something you're not allowed to buy it by internet law" thing is an assumption which is really bizarre to me.

Do you think you're in the majority when you choose to buy the EPs/CDs/music of artists, having already downloaded their songs?

(asking honestly, not trying to troll or bait)

Originally Posted by Jakiri

And I know people who've bought literally hundreds of CDs by themselves after downloading things, on average the industry gains money from our stupid examples!

I'm not as "into" music as a lot of people here, but I love films/series. Altering the subject slightly, I never download films. Like horn, I like to own them and have the whole package (literally). I don't think many people feel this way though, and faced with the choice will go with the easy (read: free) option.



Oh and horn, Jakiri is in the process of co-writing a radio show (for Radio 4, I think?) and is being deliberately vague to annoy you (probly!).

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by horn

surely what really matters to people like marv is whether you actually pay up in the end, not whether a band gets more "fans". and the answer to your first question is websites like myspace and it's ilk. you don't need to be able to download and entire album in FLAC to be able to workout if you like the band or not.

To use the Bad Religion example, the track they released from New Maps of Hell was Dearly Beloved which is a terrible terrible song. On the strength of that, as opposed to Submission Complete, Grains of Wrath, Fields of Mars and the like, I wouldn't have bought the album.

The only things I have in FLAC are Wagner operas anyway.

I also hear Arcade Fire are doing ok for themselves, they're popular on the back of the internets don'tchaknow

Originally Posted by horn

is this a joke?

No

Originally Posted by horn

you might just be doing this out the goodness of your heart (in which case well done) but from my hugely limited schema surrounding writing programs, are there not some bennefits to offering your code for free that say releasing your music does not. i.e beta testing it, getting a "fan base" for the product for when you release a version that requires payment?

Last I checked you couldn't beta test a radio show. And how could you hear a computer script?

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by horn

so you should be able to pirate a bands music on the basis that you don't trust their marketing strategy?

This isn't related in any way to what I said.

Originally Posted by horn

i rekon they'd have gotten pretty huge anyway but does it matter? if a band wants to use the internet to get big then great, but surely it's up to them?

It's not up to them (unless they're able to break away from the recording industry entirely - like Radiohead and NIN), so this is irrelevent.

Originally Posted by horn

ok well i'd suggest you look at some stats concerning year on year decline in record sales as opposed to relative drops with an industry that also happens to be suffering from piracy. it's like measuring if your aeroplane is falling by seeing if you're falling away from the person sitting next to you or not.

People don't eat out because they can download the food off the internet, am i rite

Originally Posted by horn

sorry, i'm not sure what you're saying here. you coded a radio show?

According to you I did, so I guess we're all happy.

Originally Posted by Tomkat

Oh and horn, Jakiri is in the process of co-writing a radio show (for Radio 4, I think?) and is being deliberately vague to annoy you (probly!).

How is it vague to say that I'm a writer? I didn't say I'm not a formula one driver either, is that being vague?

Originally Posted by horn

yeah i rekon that isn't true. iirc you're fairly well off and given you go to cambridge and know someone called giles i assume most of your chums have enough money to buy cd's without much worry. that isn't the case for most people though and skipping the hardcopy can be a pretty sound financial gain. again i'd ask you to look at drops in cd sales for supportive evidence.

Giles lives in a house on the north side of Cambridge that he can only reasonably afford, despite sharing it with 3 other people. Three of the people in this house I knew before I came up here. Two, including Giles, are from a tiny village in the yorkshire moors. The other's from a council estate in Darlington.

[Marilyn Manson]

Originally Posted by MrL_JaKiri

How is it vague to say that I'm a writer?

How did your robotic Himmler on a desert island story pan out?

[Tomkat]

Originally Posted by MrL_JaKiri

How is it vague to say that I'm a writer? I didn't say I'm not a formula one driver either, is that being vague?

If you said "I'm a driver" but then assumed we should know you meant Formula 1, then yes.

Google for "define: writer". Which one are you? You didn't tell us

This is beside the point though. Let's not go off-topic...!

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by horn

ya it is.
it seems to be that you're suggesting you should be able to pirate a bands music because they might not have released the singles you'd have liked. you pretending like my labelling of this siuation as a disagreement in their marketing ability as something "in no way related to what you said" is a waste of time.

Nu uh

Originally Posted by horn

aside from this being a complete red herring, there's nothing forcing bands to sign up to labels.

They have to mang, now if only someone had found a way to distribute music over the internet

Originally Posted by horn

i don't understand how this is replying to what i said.
i'll repeat what i said in hardcore maths for you.
say we have industry x, y and z. these industrys come under the umbrella industry of A. they're all loving it up in the sun until one day B comes along and starts undermining all of A and it's subsidiaries x, y and z. The stock starts to fall on all of A's subsidieries.
now an economist called mrl_science has suggested that x's stock is not actually falling, because if you look at y and z's stock, they're about the same. what mrl_science failed to notice was that they are infact falling, just that they are falling together.

Sorry I don't understand hardcore maths, I'm too busy downloading pizza from the internet and reducing the revenoo of local restaurants

Originally Posted by horn

fiar enough. they're still a minority.

One of them's gay, is he a minority minority?

[Mzyxptlk]

Luckily, I don't manufacture grand explanations or theories about why I download music, just so I can feel good about myself. The fact that OiNK went down means I'll need to spend more time searching for the music that I want to listen to. So yeah, that sucks. I don't care about musicians, nor about producers, nor about record salesmen and I especially don't care about multinational record labels. I care about me. And I'm perfectly comfortable with that.

[Phil^]

one of the last flailing grasps of a content industry that has lost its way.
The middlemen are no longer required, the artist can go direct ( like radiohead has done, and well played to them ) - yet they persist in clawing away at the walls in order to maintain their stranglehold position
Its like what leia said to tarkin - the tighter you close your grasp - the more systems will slip through your fingers

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by Phil^

one of the last flailing grasps of a content industry that has lost its way.
The middlemen are no longer required, the artist can go direct ( like radiohead has done, and well played to them ) - yet they persist in clawing away at the walls in order to maintain their stranglehold position
Its like what leia said to tarkin - the tighter you close your grasp - the more systems will slip through your fingers

Thank you for breaking the nerd stereotype yet again

[Deffeh]

free stuff is good; end of discussion

[Mzyxptlk]

The funny thing is, it's usually the people with the biggest wallets that complain the most, in this case the "big four" and their lackeys.

[Marilyn Manson]

Originally Posted by horn

i don't think enrichement of your own personal tastes in music is a particularly compelling case for a moral greenlight on pirating music.

Like I said, I think it's enriching for the bands too.

Originally Posted by horn

maybe, but then no one's stopping them from using the internet for this kind of distribution

If you (or at least, someone, at some point) is not pirating, then how are you going to get to hear about a particularly good obscure band? If a small band were relying purely on getting 'big' based on gigs and then sales through that, then they'd be hugely limited. I doubt that some of the bands which I know who have a worldwide audience and can play huge gigs across the Atlantic would have much of a following if it weren't for pirating tbh.

[Marilyn Manson]

Originally Posted by horn

the key point here mm is that it's up to them to agree with you.

I dunno really. I'm morally confused on this.

Originally Posted by horn

for instance, it wouldn't be ok for you to put your cock in me if i didn't want you to just because you think the world would be a better place with just gays.

To quote your good self:

:/

Originally Posted by horn

myspace, etc.

This is invariably going to descend into anecdote and competing rumour but I doubt that myspace is quite as effective as simply piracy, although I'd like to be proven wrong on that.

[Tomkat]

While I'm guilty of having downloaded music (as I'm sure most of you are), it isn't simply a question of whether it's right or wrong. Places like Oink being removed mean that people are probably going to look elsewhere for their music. If other similar sites also get closed, then eventually people will look to itunes (etc) to buy music. While yes, CDs are pretty overpriced, buying them online is cheap - even for "poor" people, mz.

Ideally there should be a compromise - if people want to find out about bands to expand their music collection, there must be easier (and more legal!) ways to do it than downloading it using torrents. If that is your main argument for it, then I'm sure you're not alone and hopefully something will be done about it.

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by Tomkat

While I'm guilty of having downloaded music (as I'm sure most of you are), it isn't simply a question of whether it's right or wrong. Places like Oink being removed mean that people are probably going to look elsewhere for their music. If other similar sites also get closed, then eventually people will look to itunes (etc) to buy music. While yes, CDs are pretty overpriced, buying them online is cheap - even for "poor" people, mz.

Nah, they won't. The main benefit of Oink over just any old internet music community was twofold: 1. it had things in high quality (like iTunes doesn't) 2. it had obscure things you can't get any more (like iTunes doesn't).

The generally mass-market stuff that is most easily found on iTunes is the stuff that can be most easily pirated, so all it does is punish the people who want things that can't be found elsewhere.

Originally Posted by Marilyn Manson

How did your robotic Himmler on a desert island story pan out?

Now THAT was great, in a trippy kind of way.

It got cut from TTD, which we stopped writing years ago because it was getting far too complicated.

[Marilyn Manson]

Originally Posted by MrL_JaKiri

It got cut from TTD, which we stopped writing years ago because it was getting far too complicated.

What was/is TTD?

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by Marilyn Manson

What was/is TTD?

An Comedy Film About Zombies, which had the misfortune to be started to be written at around the same time as Pegg and Wright started writing SotD. A post-modern masterpiece!

Also we could never really settle on a plot which got all the ludicrous stuff in that we wanted.

[Marilyn Manson]

horn, empty your PM box please but don't reply to the last one I sent you as I am sending you an additional clarification.

edit: (this is the clarification) I am talking of anal penetration in the previous context from a purely hypothetical perspective, for purposes of moral elaboration.

So please, reply away, do.

[JonnyBGood]

Given that I've considered the issue many times and I still haven't come up with a compelling reason why I should stop violating intellectual property laws I just really don't see why I'd care.

[MrL_JaKiri]

I've seen an average price of £4/download mentioned, with 1/3 of people paying nothing.

Source: http://entertainment.timesonline.co....cle2633798.ece

[Alki]

wish i knew that guy

[Allfather]

Dont know whats worse: people hosting illegal sites in a place like great britain or jakiri just now hearing about bad company

My first lp with them i got in the 80s, and they are still wastly superior to most modern "rockbands".

[jerome]

except he didn't make his living from it, as he had a job as described in the article

[Phil^]

and that he wasnt arrested for distribution or anything.
Hell they had to arrest him under the trademarks act - desperately stretching it to see if they can pin something on him regardless of the legality

[Yahwe]

Originally Posted by Phil^

and that he wasnt arrested for distribution or anything.
Hell they had to arrest him under the trademarks act - desperately stretching it to see if they can pin something on him regardless of the legality

errrrrrrrrrr....

he distributed trademarked material ....

which act did you think they'd use?

[Phil^]

Originally Posted by Yahwe

errrrrrrrrrr....

he distributed trademarked material ....

which act did you think they'd use?

except he didnt
tvlinks provided links to other places who then distributed it.
If they had a solid case on him distributing copyrighted material they would have used the copyright laws

Originally Posted by theregister

"I've never heard of using trademarks law for anything like this,"said Struan Robertson, legal eagle at Pinsent Masons, and editor of Out-Law.com.
"There are criminal provisions in the Trade Marks Act, but they are intended to catch the sale of counterfeit goods, not the supply of a service. I'd be surprised if the provision of links was found to be a criminal offence under the Trade Marks Act."
Indeed, section 92 is very clear that:

"A person does not commit an offence under this section unless- (a) the goods are goods in respect of which the trade mark is registered, or (b) the trade mark has a reputation in the United Kingdom and the use of the sign takes or would take unfair advantage of, or is or would be detrimental to, the distinctive character or the repute of the trade mark."

There has been no suggestion (so far) that TV-Links was involved in anything other than providing access, via web links, to copyrighted material.
Robertson speculated that they'd have a better chance of bringing a case for copyright offenses, but even that would be on new legal ground.
"They'd have to show that he was distributing or communicating copyrighted works. And that is a legal argument to be had between the prosecution and defence. It sounds like they are trying to crow-bar activity that looks wrong into laws that aren't really designed to deal with it," he told us.

[Yahwe]

Originally Posted by Phil^

except he didnt
tvlinks provided links to other places who then distributed it.
If they had a solid case on him distributing copyrighted material they would have used the copyright laws

I am afraid that I can not comment.

EDIT: btw ... Struan is at Stephenson Harwood not Pinsent Masons and ...

Struan is a partner, advising banks, ship owners and operators on a variety of financial and commercial contracts and has been nominated continuously as one of the leading experts in ship finance by Legal 500 since 1999. Struan also leads our Islamic Finance team.
He has assisted buyers in their acquisition of a leading Norwegian public company, a European bank in an innovative buyer credit scheme for a major Russian Oil Group and the owners and operators of a unique residential cruise vessel in relation to various issues.
Struan participates actively in the development and use of the London Shipping Law Centre and is a Deputy Chairman of the International Maritime Industries Forum, a body dedicated to the promotion of the maritime industries. He is a keen supporter of the inland waterways of the United Kingdom and their use and enjoyment.
Struan joined the firm in 2002 following the merger with Sinclair Roche & Temperley

[newt]

Oink was just a poor man's news-server. While I'm here, it still true that its only illegal to upload pirated stuff, not to download it? (or "properly" illegal).

My 2p on the matter - overall, file sharing is blatantly losing the industry money. But its all coming out of the big bands'/companies pockets - the small band is obviously making a profit. Therefore.. who gives a ****.

[Nodrog]

hey ive changed my beliefs about intellectual property somewhat over the last few months so screw you haters and your allegations of consistency

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by Nodrog

hey ive changed my beliefs about intellectual property somewhat over the last few months so **** you haters

You have mad opinions anyway, I don't think anyone notices when you change anything because it could just be the result of a change in something else noone cares about.

[Nodrog]

i actually have very strong and developed opinions about both the state of online space-based MMORPGs and the anime world allow me to share them with you;

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by Nodrog

i actually have very strong and developed opinions about both the state of online space-based MMORPGs and the anime world allow me to share them with you;

furthermore,

[Tomkat]

As I seem to be having a similar yet different discussion with 4 different people:

While some people seem to think I have a solid view on this, I actually don't. I made the thread because I was interested in how this closure might affect music sales in general (online or otherwise). Instead it's descended into a simpleton's argument of "this is a bad thing because it's affected me" or "it's a good thing because it's affected me". I only countered people's arguments because I wanted to stimulate a discussion - it could quite easily have gone the other way. Don't assume that because I counter your point, I have strong views countering it.

While I myself am guilty of the anecdotal example ("this is how I look at it, so I assume everyone else is too!") it's a pretty terrible way of discussing things. I can see both sides of the argument, but that isn't what I care about - it doesn't have to be "i am pro downloading free music!" or "i am anti downloading free music!". There is a grey area, guys

I'm more interested in the repercussions of this. Jakiri has said that the main reasons he liked Oink are:

1. It allowed him to listen to music that he otherwise wouldn't have.
2. It allowed him to obtain music that is very hard to get elsewhere.
3. It provided lossless files.

All interesting reasons - I didn't know Oink did this. I doubt the closure will affect lots of people - all those "popular" artists like Beyonce and Justin Timberlake still have masses of torrents circulating the net.

So what's the impact? Surely there's a niche in the market for a website that can provide what oink was providing, but "legally" and with extras? Maybe people could download poor samples from bands for a reduced cost (10p a track?) which then goes to the artist. If they like it, they can then upgrade it to a FLAC file for another 10-20p.

[All Systems Go]

Originally Posted by Tomkat

Instead it's descended into a simpleton's argument of "this is a bad thing because it's affected me"

Out of interest, who do you think made this argument?

So what's the impact? Surely there's a niche in the market for a website that can provide what oink was providing, but "legally" and with extras? Maybe people could download poor samples from bands for a reduced cost (10p a track?) which then goes to the artist. If they like it, they can then upgrade it to a FLAC file for another 10-20p.

A lot of the rare stuff isn't available throguh legal means, due to people holding the copyright being unwilling to release it or whatever the legal situation happens to be.

[MrL_JaKiri]

Part of the issue with some of the things are licensing ones, the same reason you'll never see the Alan Moore/Neil Gaiman comic Marvelman (later renamed Miracleman due to the interference of Marvel comics) released again.

There's also moral grey areas (although not legal ones) with things like the NIN back catalogue. Reznor basically wants to give his music out to all and sundry, but he doesn't have any rights for the songs, and there's cases of musicians having to resort to legal action to get the rights to msuic that their publishers are either no longer publishing or have never published, but nevertheless own.

FLAC (or another lossless codec of choice) is also much more obscure than the "industry standards" MP3 and whatever horrible proprietry formats the large companies want to come out with. I'd imagine a fair amount of music is bought for putting on a mobile magic music box thing such as an iPod, but very few of them support FLAC or even the relatively known, but now relatively defunct, Ogg Vorbis.

On a purely thievery level, I also liked downloading other recordings of Wagner operas. In almost all cases the conductor and composer are dead, and I'm not paying through the nose to have a slightly different interpretation of the bacchanal from Tannhauser. In some cases they're not being published still, so that's another issue.

[Tomkat]

In terms of old artists you wanted to buy; are CDs etc still being produced with their albums on?

I think if a computer game goes out of circulation, it's fine to download it for free online. Is it not the same for music*? If not, why not



*i thought i typed this in my post above but after re-reading i must have deleted it

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by Tomkat

In terms of old artists you wanted to buy; are CDs etc still being produced with their albums on?

This doesn't apply for very many things, as in almost all cases we're talking about opera which has a slightly different thing going on. Actual albums I downloaded have generally been for current bands.

Originally Posted by Tomkat

I think if a computer game goes out of circulation, it's fine to download it for free online. Is it not the same for music*? If not, why not

The situation with games and music is, as far as I'm aware, identical legally. The difference is that there's no industry wide gaming body similar to the RIAA that has decided to aggressively defend its old properties, although games are taken down fairly often from sites like Underdogs at the request of the IP holders.

Having said that, technological concerns, and advances, are much more of an issue with games than with music - Hardwar was a fairly competent Elite clone back in its day, but noone's going to pay full price for it because the industry has moved on, whereas it's less clear cut to say that the "value" of something like a popular Oingo Boingo album from the 80's has dropped.

In related areas, the industry is still pushing for increases in the length of copyright for things like music. Cliff Richard needs the money!

[All Systems Go]

I'd just like to point out that singles are an inherently shit way of selling music. They are far too expensive and there is a tendancy to put out several versions of a single and have different B-sides on each version, which is a piss-take in itself.