Pirates Everywhere Pour Out A Little For OiNK

Oh snap! Looks like all those “serious music aficionados” will have to argue about bitrates somewhere else now, because the combined might of British and Dutch law enforcement has shut down OiNK, the invite-only file-trading hub that had become the P2P-era equivalent of a Little Rascals treehouse fort with a sign that read “No 128KBps Allowed.”

The raids, in Amsterdam and Middlesbrough, followed a two-year investigation into a members-only Web site, www.OiNK.cd, which allowed users to upload and download albums before their release.

An estimated 180,000 members of the site paid “donations” via debit or credit cards, ensuring that they could continue to access the site and its catalogue of music and other media.

The site provided access to more than 60 albums before their release this year, according to industry experts.

Wow, 180,000 members on lists probably now in the hands of the authorities during the international music industry’s most litigious season in recent memory. Whoops! (Actually many of the news stories on OiNK’s shutdown are getting the facts wrong–users didn’t have to pay dues to remain an OiNK user; they just had to upload a shit-ton of music, so as to keep their upload-to-download ratio high enough.) Here’s hoping that whatever user logs the cops have don’t include any of the entitled boys and girls on this Digg thread:

This has to be a fucking joke. I need my OiNK.

There, there…we all survived Audiogalaxy leaving us, and we’ll all survive this. Promise.

Raids Target Music Piracy Site [Reuters]