Thursday 25 October 2007

People who donated

Again i have to remind people who donated in the past, DONT PANIC.

Users who donated ten bucks a year ago are sure not worth the time and work it takes to trace back Paypal transactions. Also UK/NL has to work closely with other foreign authorities, which slows things down and complicates it further.

Because never any user has received upload credit or such for donations received, we can safely say that at this time, people who have donated can feel safe. Media reports saying that people were forced to donate to be able to download or stay on the site are false. Users who have been on the site know better.

26 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good to know :)

Anonymous said...

I know this is off-topic, but someone should sue the IFPI and the BPI for turning OINK.CD into an unaccessible website. I can barely read the text on that page, because the contrast between the white and the gray is too much. They incorrectly used the img tag. And also did not define what type of HTML they were using. Bad bad bad. retarded company.

Anonymous said...

oops, I meant to say "too little"

zaP said...

Thats what ypu get when making websites with MS Word :)

Anonymous said...

Don't kid yourselves people. (Donators)
If they want to charge you with "accessory after the fact" they can.

Anonymous said...

Actually, the accessory after the fact statute states:

"Whoever, knowing that an offense has been committed, receives, relieves, comforts or assists the offender in order to hinder or prevent his apprehension, trial or punishment, is an accessory after the fact"

Donators certainly didn't donate with the intention of helping prevent apprehension, trial, or punishment, since that wasn't even on the table until Tuesday. Donators donated to help offset the costs of a great site, and even now it's not clear whether simply running the site was illegal so knowledge that an "offense has been committed" is pure speculation.

If I give the guy in the street $10 to help him out, and then he goes and robs a bank with a knife he bought with my $10, I'm not responsible. I didn't know what he was going to do with that money. Same case here. Except in this case, it's not even clear now, after everyone donated, that Oink staffers did anything wrong at all.

Besides, there was plenty of perfectly legal content on Oink (forums, torrents, etc). Donations were donations. Period. No strings attached, no expectations, nothing.

Anonymous said...

sticking around and reading the news because you don't feel safe is pretty pathetic. just my opinion here, but if you are in a panic, don't blame oink. blame yourself.

me, i am not in a panic. i stick around because of the kinship of my peers at oink.

if you donated at one time, good for you.

Anonymous said...

donations seem to be the real issue here in a lot of ways. did OiNK profit from copyright infringement? its the one thing he did not comment on in the telegraph interview.

however, maybe the acceptance of money is the problem and not the payment of it. that would be bad for OiNK but good for donors, for what its worth.

Anonymous said...

"They incorrectly used the img tag." Actually the img tag is fine. The br tag, on the other hand, is not.

Anonymous said...

What about recent donors...say in the week before the incident?

Unknown said...

was paypal the only way to donate? i donated roughly year and a half ago i think but i cant for the life of me remember if i used paypal, and no record of it exists.

Anonymous said...

""They incorrectly used the img tag." Actually the img tag is fine. The br tag, on the other hand, is not."

Actually, it is invalid in both versions of HTML (XHTML and HTML). In HTML, it has no end tag (<img src="">), while in XHTML it has to end (<img src=""/>).
[sourced from http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_img.asp]

Whatever, it doesn't matter. It's hard to read and I think we should sue them!

Anonymous said...

Zap,

The major issue for donors is not going to be getting dragged into some racketeering or accessory charge. It's so untenable and such an extreme situation that it's just infinitesimally unlikely.

The big deal for donors is going to be if their paypal accounts can be linked to their oink profiles--thus associating a real world identity with a profile. Was the donor status on the oink profiles basically a yes/no switch? Either you are a donor or you aren't? Or was pertinant information about from where, how much, and when you donated logged in the profile?

That is going to be the big issue, at least if the athorities have their wits about them.

-thanks

Unknown said...

I don't know if it is comforting, or alarming, that the people leading the investigation have no web skills.

The <img> tag is used incorrectly, and the IFPI logo is 592 pixels wide, scaled down to 150 in the tag. They're wasting bandwidth by not using a smaller image. Include that complaint in the law suit. And OiNK should chage them for using his high-traffic site to advertise.

Anonymous said...

I think its a little unlikely that there were sufficient donations to turn a profit. As a donater myself, I did it to keep the forums going. Honest, guv. Without them it was hard to speak to people

Anonymous said...

I think its a little unlikely that there were sufficient donations to turn a profit. As a donater myself, I did it to keep the forums going. Honest, guv. Without them it was hard to speak to people

zaP said...

I wonder tho whats more important, the outcome of a police investigation, the future of a large community, or the proper use of if img tags on some retarded site?

Anonymous said...

so how soon can a donor expect a knock on the door or a letter in the mail? does it all depend on how long it takes paypal to hand over names and addresses? can a US donor be charged in Britain or would it take action by the US government?

if they're going to claim that every donor paid for illegal pre-releases then that is what it will come to, i'm afraid. its a shame that donors were just trying to help and now its going to hang them.

Anonymous said...

They cant prove what exactly certain usernames downloaded correct?

So donating could be so you could use the forums or download uncopyrighted material?

So they cannot directly link donors to piracy... thats what im thinking.

Just because the username is linked to a donation does not mean you were downloading copywritten material.

Anonymous said...

^ that makes sense and i hope that is the case (i'm the scared guy above you, btw).

so if they want to claim that donations were payments for pre-releases they would have to prove each donor downloaded a pre-release, which they can't do because there is no record of what users snatched what torrents.

if that is the case, hopefully they will see that and not even try to go after donors.

is it completely confirmed and true that there is no record of which users (whether by IP or by user name) downloaded which torrents? zap or paine?

zaP said...

In all honesty, we dont know for sure. In my opinion, all there can be, are the snatchlists, which list what torrents a certain user has completed. But the snatches are not stored together with the IP. Only the last used IP of every user was usually saved, in no relation to a snatched torrent tho. So even if they would get all that, they cant link it to much. Please note, my personal opinion only. Only the maincoder of the site knows what exactly has been changed within the last few months to the code. I can only repeat: DONT PANIC.

Anonymous said...

thanks for answering, zap. but if a snatchlist says a certain user name snatched a torrent and the paypal records show that a person donated money for that user name, then that's a potential problem. does OiNK know the answer to this and if so would he tell us?

zaP said...

I personally dont know. I wont think it would be possibly to get a judge to convict you based on the relation snatchlist, some ip, and a paypal transaction. If Oink comments on that, we will let you know. But neither he or me are lawyers. People who are seriously worried, go see a real lawyer. All you read on the web, no matter if its dailytelegraph or such, is not to be trusted in legal matters.

Anonymous said...

"Whoever, knowing that an offense has been committed, receives, relieves, comforts or assists the offender in order to hinder or prevent his apprehension, trial or punishment, is an accessory after the fact"

Not Norwegian law, so not so worried about that.

And if they get a hold of my DL history, they'll quickly see that what I DL'd wasn't any pre-releases, but rather hard to get back catalogue albums that isn't available in stores anymore.. Why? Because those dumbass record companies can't get their retarded asses into gear. "Ass first into the next millenia!" does seem to be their collective motto

Anonymous said...

please !
i need OiNK - bring it back, at least the forums!!!!!!!!!

btw, i hate how in the wikipedia article, it says that oink 'was' a prominent tracker

OINK ISNT DEAD

Anonymous said...

So oink did log IP addresses relative to profiles, that's good to know. Can the snatchlists be matched up to the profiles too?