Oink users, should they be worried?

BAMF213

As you all know Oink was shut down and when you go to the site it reads

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

Does this mean members will also be prosecuted as well?

If so does anyone have any advice for users who were members?

Lewisham

Possibly, but they're going to look for the worst offenders (ie. the ones that were uploading pre-release stuff or heavy volumes of stuff) and take them to town. They can't sue everyone, and the notice is more of a scare tactic to try and prevent users going elsewhere.

You don't have much you can do, because they're going to base their evidence off the server logs. If you reformat your hard drive after today, there will be a heavy burden of suspicion that you did it because you were guilty.

Fuzzy Cumulonimbus Cloud

Wait, so if I watch something on Youtube, I can be criminally charged?
Or is this something different.

HadjiQuest

Fuzzy Cumulonimbus Cloud wrote: »

Wait, so if I watch something on Youtube, I can be criminally charged?
Or is this something different.

You probably could, although you'd have the deflection that YouTube is a reputable site and you were tricked.

Oink was downright madness. I know a ton of people who were too lazy to get in rainbows directly from Radiohead, and just waited for it to hit oink instead.

Lewisham

Oink was a torrent site full of pirate material to be downloaded.

Fuzzy Cumulonimbus Cloud

Oh, yeah, I try not to download pirated things.

mooshoepork

HadjiQuest wrote: »

Fuzzy Cumulonimbus Cloud wrote: »

Wait, so if I watch something on Youtube, I can be criminally charged?
Or is this something different.

You probably could, although you'd have the deflection that YouTube is a reputable site and you were tricked.

Oink was downright madness. I know a ton of people who were too lazy to get in rainbows directly from Radiohead, and just waited for it to hit oink instead.

Maybe your friends were too lazy, but I know a lot of people including myself that weren't. Radiohead handled the launch very poorly in my opinion. Sure it was good in the end, and a good premise, but how they distributed the album was poorly done. I didn't recieve my email till the following day, and was an early buyer. I know others who suffered a similar problem. Most people I talked to could get it faster illegally, than they could from radiohead.

ViolentChemistry

At what point did someone say that it would be okay to hijack this thread into a discussion about the ethical-status of piracy and moral obligations of bands to get their shit to their fans faster than they can steal it? This is the only warning this entire thread gets. Stick to the subject, a law-question, and don't drift. Especially not in a '60s Mustang, that doesn't make you look cool it makes you look like a giant tool.

AresProphet

The disclaimer is largely a scare tactic, which unfortunately works precisely because they've prosectued your everyday downloader for obscene amounts of money. You may have seen those cases on the news and thought, "wow, why are they going after someone who downloaded 12 movies, for $2 million?" It looks stupid, and we make fun of them.

Until your torrent site gets shut down with a disclaimer saying they will ivestigate and prosecute users. Suddenly, that "frivolous" lawsuit has a very real purpose. You're scared into not downloading pirated music anymore for fear of getting sued. Most people who download this stuff can't even afford a lawyer to fight the kind of protracted legal battle industry representatives will make the lawsuit. I know I couldn't. But it's a very small fraction of site users that get prosecuted in most cases.

This doesn't mean every user is safe; with as big as Oink was someone is going to get sued, if only to be made an example of. And "scene" releasers are probably the prime targets, as they are the ones most directly responsible for any lost revenue artists might claim from pirate sites.

The case against Oink itself is somewhat flimsier: they hosted torrent sites, never a single byte of illegal data passed through their servers. This doesn't mean it's baseless, because lawyers are smarter than me. It's the most prevalent uploaders who are the biggest targets though, as it can be proven that they infringed on copyrights the most flagrantly.

Decius

You should be no more worried then you would have been from the same disclaimers they put up on any of the other private torrent sites they've taken down. I've been a member of many of them, and have yet to be sued.

That being said, my country's laws don't seem to be as archaic and some other countries. That's not for lack of trying. Fucking CRIA.

Tar

Hah, trent reznor had an oink account. Very cool.

All sadness aside, who has waffles.fm invites!?!?

edit:

Ahh, didnt realize i was in the H/A forum after i did a search on active threads for "oink"...

In all seriousness, no oink user should be worried at all, i know alot of people that were on torrentbits, loki torrent etc.. that got raided and never got so much as a peep from any suits/admins/feds/vampires.