Author Topic: RIP Oink  (Read 1669 times)

Burning Zeppelin

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RIP Oink
« on: October 24, 2007, 04:50:13 am »
Oink is dead. Apparently, Oink was one of the major pre-release album leaking torrent sites in the world. Sad news. But the most creepy part of it is that the replacement homepage to it states that the "users are now being investigated". Ouch! What would the risk of being caught be if:

1. You are a minor
2. You live in Australia
3. You donated
4. You uploaded/downloaded a fair bit (around 10gigabytes for both).

I am hating this anti-piracy system more and more.

Kyronea

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Re: RIP Oink
« Reply #1 on: October 24, 2007, 05:30:40 am »
I wouldn't worry about it, really. Besides, they're not going to kill piracy.

Piracy is something that will always be around so long as a cause for it to occur exists. The current anti-piracy strategy employed by the RIAA and similar organizations is much like the United States' foreign policy against Muslim terrorists, or the current policies of the various US governments against crime. The more the U.S. fights against Muslim terrorists by invading and striking and otherwise using military force like they're a standard run of the mill enemy instead of an idea, the more terrorists they create, the more moderate Muslims they turn to the extremists' cause. So too do we make more criminals and further cause damage to our society by treating criminals with purely punative measures instead of helping them to rehabilitate and reintegrate into society better.

Anti-piratical methods only make more people turn to piracy because the methods make enjoying the material harder. Bioshock is a good example: the CD-protection makes it extremely hard to install and actually play, whereas a pirated copy will play perfectly without a single hitch.

In order to destroy piracy like this, you would have to eliminate the industry, much how you would have to eliminate all Muslims or all possible criminals.

No, what they should do is focus on the causes of the piracy, eliminate the reason for piracy rather than trying to go after piracy the way they do. All they're doing now is alienating people and increasing piracy dramatically.

It's not that hard to understand why though. File-sharing came along incredibly fast, and they're all panicking and trying to keep up, and they will fail.

Generality

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Re: RIP Oink
« Reply #2 on: October 24, 2007, 05:54:28 am »
Getting back to the point, you're not at much risk. Granted, pirates have been crushed under lawsuits from time to time, but they don't have the resources to go after every one of the millions of perpetrators linked to that site. They tend to focus on university students, as they tend to use university internet connections which require authorization and thus prove the identity of the user. Otherwise, the most they can get from the site is your IP address, and that doesn't prove anything.

Unfortunately, I don't know how fervent the Australian government is about hunting down music pirates, but I'm going to guess not very much.

Burning Zeppelin

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Re: RIP Oink
« Reply #3 on: October 24, 2007, 06:05:51 am »
Thankfully, not very! I doubt they'll change legislation, especially so close to an election, to target a poor 15 year old boy.

Burning Zeppelin

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Re: RIP Oink
« Reply #4 on: October 24, 2007, 07:44:32 am »

ZeaLitY

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Re: RIP Oink
« Reply #5 on: October 24, 2007, 02:49:58 pm »
Time for a famous pirate rally, then.



Yo, ho, haul together,
Hoist the colors high;
Heave, ho, thieves and beggars,
Never shall we die!



Thought

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Re: RIP Oink
« Reply #6 on: October 24, 2007, 02:57:05 pm »
You have very little to worry about as logistics are on your side. Just think of how many users participated in the site itself over the time it was active. The time it would take to track down even a fraction of them is immense. If the organization that is tracking them down is in a different nation, you are even more secure (you are physically outside their jurisdiction). However, if they do try to get you (and if "They" are the RIAA) then you might be able to join the class action lawsuit against them.

Of course, pirating music has seen a bit of a lull due to more legal alternatives. Services like iTunes allow people to download music at a lower price, giving the consumer the opportunity to posses more individual instances of higher quality products for less (one of the big complaints about CDs is that a good number of albums only had one or two songs, but consumers were forced to pay for the rubbish along with it). If the music industry would get on the ball, cut their overhead, and offer more music online for even less, that would drive music pirating almost out of "business." The RIAA won’t prevent pirating, but they can make it inconvenient. If the price of purchasing music from iTunes is low enough, and the inconvenience of pirating it is high enough, only the "rich" will pirate.

Note, anti-pirating software and the sort might turn a few people to pirating, but it also turns people away from the product all together. When the anti-pirating software becomes bad enough, it will actually be unprofitable for companies to use it.

Kyronea, I am quite amused that you are comparing people who illegally download software/music to Islamic extremists.

Kyronea

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Re: RIP Oink
« Reply #7 on: October 24, 2007, 06:24:24 pm »
Quote
Kyronea, I am quite amused that you are comparing people who illegally download software/music to Islamic extremists.
Considering I am a pirate myself, it was actually an in-joke.

But my main point was to illustrate a parallel between piracy and other similar things. I chose Islamic extremism because it's the most well known and therefore the easiest to draw a parallel to. You don't eliminate things like piracy by trying to stop piracy itself. You eliminate piracy by removing the REASONS to pirate.

Of course, I don't expect them to listen to that sort of reason anymore than the U.S. government will listen to reason when it comes to foreign policy, no matter who is in charge. (Maybe if Dennis Kucinich or Mike Gravel were, but no one else would.) The RIAA and similar organizations have been sitting pretty enjoying raking in as much money as they could and they're not willing to compromise by losing a portion of their profits for sustainability. They're not looking ahead.

And the U.S. government too is not looking ahead nor is it considering its mistakes in the past. It's still acting as if Islamic extremism is a country or specific object to fight against rather than an idea that must be combated by diplomacy, cooperation, and compromise. I just hope they learn before this War on Terrorism goes on for decades as it surely will if they do not.

Anyway...

Burning Zeppelin

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Re: RIP Oink
« Reply #8 on: October 25, 2007, 05:45:37 am »
Good to see Z leading the pirate's to glory.

Thanks for the reassurance Thought. A problem with the legal alternatives, which is the reason many people turned to sites like Oink, is that most of their songs have DRM, and DRM-free tracks are usually more expensive (though this is soon to change). Also, high bitrate files are very uncommon on online legal alternatives, especially FLAC which is the major attraction to Oink (as well as, according to the police, pre-release album leaks).

I just hope the USA doesn't invade Sweden or Netherlands to combat the "terrorist pirates".

Kyronea

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Re: RIP Oink
« Reply #9 on: October 25, 2007, 05:14:07 pm »
Yeah, see, the problem with the music industry right now is the way the prices keep going up for no reason. A CD takes all of three cents to produce one and about ten cents more to stamp the necessary files. Even taking into account a couple extra dollars to cover other possible expenses incurred from CD production as well as the jewel case, as well as, say, five dollars for the profit of the artist, it's still ridiculous since CDs should cost LESS than cassette tapes ever did, and yet the first CDs started out at $14.99 and never dropped in price. (For reference, a typical cassette would cost $8.99)

Radical_Dreamer

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Re: RIP Oink
« Reply #10 on: October 26, 2007, 02:57:48 am »
BZ, you should check out Amazon's MP3 download service. Good quality, no DRM, and good prices. I haven't had time to get more than the demo song yet, but when I get a chance, I'm going to be getting some stuff through them.

Eden110

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Re: RIP Oink
« Reply #11 on: October 26, 2007, 08:50:15 am »
I agree with Amazon's MP3.  It's good quality music at an affordable price.

I just wish more online services offer more in terms of international music.  As far as I know, iTunes is the only service to provide Japanese music for download in the United States.  That includes Final Fantasy soundtracks that I would not mind purchasing except: 1) no Ipod and 2) my digital audio player is not AAC compatible.  While I will eventually purchase the albums I download, some of the CDs I want are ranging to almost $50 each.  Downloading the music through P2P is an easier way to acquire the music until I earn enough money to purchase it.

ZeaLitY

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Re: RIP Oink
« Reply #12 on: October 26, 2007, 02:37:28 pm »
The Pirate Bay is attempting a public resurrection:

http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-to-bring-back-oink-071026/

Burning Zeppelin

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Re: RIP Oink
« Reply #13 on: October 27, 2007, 10:58:37 pm »
Meh, even if it does I doubt I'll ever go back.

I heard about Amazon's music service. Might check it out later. Or maybe I'm just being paranoid about torrenting. Either way...