Right -- This stops now.
I'm Paine. I used to be a moderator at OiNK.cd, until, as you know, we were shut down by the BPI and IFPI.
Now, there are far, FAR too many rumours flying around, and I wanted to set some shit straight.
1. There is no official OiNK IRC right now.
EDIT: Defunct. See newest post.
2. OiNK will _NOT_ be up today, or tomorrow.
We're not magic. None of the moderators have access to the current code and databases right now -- in fact, neither does OiNK himself, as his stuff was confiscated (remember the crap you saw in the plastic bags on the news?). People purporting to be TMT and/or OiNK are, to be frank, lying their fucking asses off.
3. There is currently _NO_ "oink legal fund".
DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT give ANY money to ANY of these fake funds you are seeing. They are scams. OiNK will not see a penny of this money, and neither will you.
4. OiNK himself is safe and well.
He's fine and out on bail.
5. There is no "official" OiNK forum right now.
While there may not be an official forum, a lot of our ex-users are flocking to http://www.ohax.com/phpBB2/ -- Some of the users on there are actually staff. However there are also people maliciously using that site to link to scam sites and other various filth.
Anyway, I hope that's settled a lot of shit. If you're in doubt I'm who I say I am, then don't believe me. I encourage you all to exercise extreme caution when people are floating around throwing names about left right and center saying these things. The "TMT" on Dalnet was not our TMT. In fact, nobody has been in contact with him, and I expect it will remain that way for a very long time.
Edit: A few people have asked me if we logged the IP you snatched things from. The answer is no, we did not log snatch IPs.
Edit 2: This is an important one -- Your passwords do NOT need to be changed, they were stored as salted MD5 hashes. All the authorities have is the hashes. The only way they can get the original passwords is via brute force. The chances of that are slim to none if you followed standard good password practice.
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95 comments:
Thanks for the info, Paine. Keep us updated; I've got this site bookmarked.
hi, paine thanks for the post.
you seem to insinuate that oink may be back in some form at some point in the future... am i suffering from a case of wishful thinking or is this anyway feasible and you ppls' thoughts at all?
Wishful thinking is all we have right now, we're still trying to get in touch with a few straggling mods who've disappeared. We don't know if it'll be back, although it's fair to say we'd all jump at the chance to do it.
i'd think someone kept at least some backups of something somewhere. (the torrentbits modifications?) but maybe that's just wishful thinking.
Sure we had backups. We did daily backups and had a 10 minute downtime every day at 8 GMT. That doesn't mean they're easily accessable.
do you know if PM records will be accessible to police? Is that stuff encrypted or is it entirely visible to people who have admin status?
right, i meant backups offsite. :)
well okay, that makes me feel a little better, maybe.
(btw, has anyone been in touch with the EFF or Open Rights Group in the UK about all of this?)
blessings go out fi de staff..may jah guide your ways..
Thanks for this. And if you are in fact who you say you are, you should know that the community meant a great deal to thousands of music lovers. Good luck & let's hope for the best!
I've c&p'd this to a few doubtful people, alot of whom have now realised that everything in the news isn't always accurate ...
Propropro.
face.
Thank you. This was necessary. Very much appreciated.
paine, in case you don't know EFF or ORG, those are groups supporting freedom on the internet and defending p2p in many cases.
i'm friends w/ people at both of them. let me know...
As far as I'm aware, no-one has been in touch with either of them.
However OiNK has given an interview to The Daily Telegraph.
paine, cool, but they have lawyers, so they could potentially help out. (the EFF defended grokster in the US supreme court.)
is there an accessible IRC channel people are on?
Can oink donators be sued or charged and will users be sued or charged for uploading or downloading? I'm glad I never upped major label releases and am strictly into underground music.
Good luck to all staff.
The chances of any users being chased up are slim to none.
anonymous, i go to law school, and i seriously doubt that anyone would get sued. there are MAJOR evidentiary issues involved, and it would be especially hard to prove infringement of RIAA material.
even if someone donated, that is not necessarily illegal in and of itself.
so basically, IMO, there's no chance.
Thanks for the update dude, this is very much appreciated. I hope this stops the shit-wave.
Thanks for the reply. I was thinking more for the UK users since that's where it was based.
Can they find out who donated and have access to what was uploaded and downloadedand by whom?
Again, good luck to y'all.
Is the interview with Oink posted anywhere?
anonymous, i admittedly know less about UK law, but i think my claims still stand there. you need to prove that someone actually downloaded something to sue them. as paine said in his post update, oink did not log snatch IPs. as a result, it seems like it would be impossible to prove. (they may be able to associate username with emails with snatches, but that's still extremely difficult to prove that the actual person did it.)
remember, it's not ALL oink material they can sue for, it's only RIAA/IFPI stuff. so being an oink member alone doesn't suffice anyway.
needless to say, i think you can sleep at night without worry.
Like we said, hardly any (if any at all, which I don't think there are) logs were kept on users.
The interview has not been posted anywhere, although I assume if it gets in the paper/on the internet it'll be all around the net pretty soon. (I'll post a link here when it does come up)
Thanks Paine. Good to hear from reliable folks.
paine, i'll stop spamming your comments, but online freedom / copyright / p2p is my area of expertise, and i know a lot of people in this field (like the heads of EFF, ORG).
please let me know if there's an irc channel i can find you on, or some other way of getting in contact. i think they can help.
Atari-
Anyone on here could be anyone else. For all paine knows, your a fed looking for a way to contact him to track him down. The same could be said for me.
In his position, the number of people I would trust with any amount of my personal contact info would be next to zero.
Could you potentially help him? Sure. Could I potentially be jesus christ himself? Probably equally possible. It's the Internet. You just never know...
Atari: fucknet.
I used the password oink gave me, but I assume there's no way anyone can get that from the server or anything?
Very awesome. Thank you sir.
Everyone is really in a panic right now. The best thing you guys can do is take your time and not rush things. Regardless I just hope everyone turns out OK.
My suggestion (if indeed OiNK resumes) is to flat out ban albums posted before their street release date. Those leaks seemed to be the bait, or at least the excuse?
I wonder how many people freaked out and unplugged their modems.
itcouldbeanyone, of course i could be a fed, and so could you.
but there's this thing called the internet, and things like encryption and anonymizing ips (like tor), and they're awesome!
basically, there are ways to communicate on the internet without compromising one's privacy/anonymity.
oh yeah, i'm friends with the tor (tor.eff.org) guys too. they rock! and if only it were faster.
good to hear from u,
my thoughts remains with you.
I said it at the "memorial blog" and I will say it again: we need to keep away from all the trouble of the "OiNK" name right now, but we definitely need to take action. We need to make buttons for website that say "I <3 music", and make people show their support.
oink was the best thing ever for rare and oop shares.
my prediction is that all the press this oinkbust is getting backfires on the haters-that-be when it helps grow the share-base (once they realize they can't sue everybody).
anyway good luck all
h.o.
What's the word on people's PayPal accounts?
I love you man. I'm praying for the safety of OiNK.
Atari-
Agreed on all accounts. I meant that, if I were paine, I wouldn't post any sort of contact info on this particular blog, as it's linked to very publicly. A private message. An encrypted email, hell, a netsend would be more secure than that. It was just my two cents.
As to those who want to "get back" at someone for taking down a website- stop. There's no point. Boycotting buying music is not going to hurt the industry that badly. Neither is putting up some sort of button. Choose your battles. Now, when all the cameras are on you and the light is the brightest, is not the time to make some sort of "stealth strike". Deal with it. Wait for this to become old (maybe 2 weeks Internet time?), then look around for a resurrection of our favorite site.
I'd like to thank you Paine for putting up this blog. I was wondering if having had encryption on in uTorrent will make it harder for users to be traced?
Allegedly some ex-OiNKers are being hassled by their ISPs.
See: http://torrentfreak.com/oink-admin-released-from-custody-071023/#comment-194577
At least two have ALLEGEDLY been contacted.
For the sake of other ex-OiNKers I hope this isn't a trend.
Paine, I know you said that almost no logs were taken. But I was just wondering how much of the PayPal information was kept by the servers? Or, was it all handled simply by PayPal (meaning that PayPal has those records)?
Well, thanks for the update. It was a wonderful site while it lasted, and I hope Oink and every user/admin will be safe from prosecution.
Those are indeed paypal's records.
Turning on encryption basically attempts to disguise the fact it's bittorrent traffic from your ISP. Of course with Comcast's sandvine technology, it's almost completely redundant nowadays.
What's the likelihood of IFPI going after paypal for it or getting into Oink's account?
Has the site been shutdown permanently as in the fact that you cannot bring it back by law or has it just been taken down temporarily while they investigate?
If that was badly worded try this:
Will OiNK ever see the chance to get all the files off the servers if he wanted to bring it back or will the police keep it indefinitely?
Thanks for enlightening us, paine. It came as a hell of a shock to me.. but can you tell me: do they really have anything against OiNK? I mean, I'm sure he's not stupid (of course not.. <3 we love him) and doesn't participate in spreading scene releases, as that would be an obvious risk. So do they have any strong leverage in court? It's just a tracker.. and those "super early pre release holy shit we are soo losing money, so we can't afford to cover our pools with gold" claims can be easily debunked in court.
OiNK wouldn't probably be running trackers anytime soon anyway?
I thought you mods/admins might join up, spread the love and buy a server at PRQ. Plus, PRQ/TPB are strong fighters against IFPI and bitches likewise (see: ifpi.com). You can verify old users. Yes, wishful thinking.. but that's my dream for now.
I *don't know* if we'll get the stuff back, it's as simple as that. It's been taken down for investigations as far as I know.
I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not sure how what they think they've got, though I am however pretty confident.
Good stuff, please keep up posted, I'm taking this as the official word now.
Hey Paine,
What do you make of these claims that people are receiving messages threatening to cancel service when starting up their browsers?
-Anon
Why not send some flames to:
Internet Anti-Piracy Unit
Jeremy Banks- Vice-President, Internet Anti-Piracy
IFPI Secretariat
10 Piccadilly
London
W1J 0DD
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)20 7878 7900
Fax: +44 (0)20 7878 7950
E-mail: info@ifpi.org
or to
BPI
Riverside Building
County Hall
Westminster Bridge Road
London SE1 7JA
T: +44 (0)20 7803 1300
F: +44 (0)20 7803 1310
E: general@bpi.co.uk / antipiracy@bpi.co.uk
61 Oct 23, 2007 at 19:16 by h33t
@Why not send some flames to:
and that would help how?
thnx for the info
& thnx to everyone involved in the site
Oink was a lot of fun.I'm gonna miss it =>
really a lot...
:(
How much trouble would someone in the UK who had uploaded and downloaded about 2gb be in, lawsuit-wise, would you say?
@How much trouble would someone in the UK who had uploaded and downloaded about 2gb be in, lawsuit-wise, would you say?:
um, nobody really knows. but, just to be safe, move to nigeria.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2247/1733916860_70881656c3_o.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2247/1733916860_70881656c3_o.jpg
So would they have access to any paypal account of those who donated in the past? You say no logs were kept on users, which of course is good news for users. Also, they would need to essentially guess a users password to see their account?
I would've thought it would depend on how much uploaded was on the BPI/RIAA radar.
The people who leaked the scene releases I am sure will be who they're after to stop them doing it elsewhere.
I know a lot of people who have quit torrenting because of this.
People claiming to have cease and desist letters in their browsers are probably just trying to cause hysteria. Their ISPs wouldn't just do it for one page view, and they would have no way to post comments about not being able to get online ;)
They wouldn't need to guess a user's password, I was merely pointing out that users passwords are safe.
Thanks Paine. Definitely appreciate the official word. Not usually given to prayer (being an atheist and all) but if there is a god, hopefully he'll see fit to return OiNk to something approaching it's former glory.
Paine, thanks for everything! I have a question, I've heard that the tracker is still running, why do you think this is?
Presumably so they can log the IPs of anyone using a torrent program who doesn't know about the site being taken down?
so how much trouble are donors in? if they subpoena paypal, they could sink everybody who donated, in theory, one assumes. how many users would that represent?
Is it illegal to have donated though? I can't see it. anyone been in touch with a UK lawyer?
The tracker's not running.
They won't be after donors -- they're after people who they think are selling copyrighted material. The reason they went after oinky is because they thought he was making money.
Penis
What information, if any, do they have on the users right now that could be used potentially in future civil lawsuits if they decide to go that route?
Wow, thanks for your illuminating commentary "anonymous" of 15:16. Any other words of wisdom you'd like to impart? Maybe "fart"? "Poop"?
"According to the article, a source has stated that the OiNK membership list was not only encrypted, but also equipped with a ’self-destruct’ type mechanism which relied on a regular signal to continue in ‘OFF’ mode."
Taken from: http://torrentfreak.com/oink-down-norwegian-bittorrent-trackers-next-071024/
paine - any chance of this being true, or just more misinformation?
And it's been said 1000 times, but thanks :)
@paine:
i've got to think that oink wasn't making money, although i don't know for sure, of course. it seems that donations would merely have paid for or partially paid for the server uptime.
After an apparent 2 year investigation, they still believed he was making money and charging users? These people are pathetic.
after a 2 year investigation they still believe that a) people were subscribing to the service and b) you had to prove you could upload your own stuff before being gained entry. obviously they didn't do a good job which is why this whole thing is bs.
for a journalist who didn't just copy the press release, read this. at least someone is on our side.
and i know you've heard it a lot paine, but thanks for keeping us updated.
let me join anonymous in anonymously re-asking:
"What information, if any, do they have on the users right now that could be used potentially in future civil lawsuits if they decide to go that route?"
Paine, or whoever,
So you say that you didn't log IP's? Out of curiosity, does this mean that you weren't actively logging IP's on your forum and/or other installed software? Or do you mean to say that you disabled system logs, network logs, router logs, etc...?
There's a hell of a lot of logging going on in the average server box...
Is it your assertion that you had several hundred thousand users transferring gigs of data across unencrypted, public networks, but magically left no identifiable trace of those users not only in your logs, but any logs?
"What information, if any, do they have on the users right now that could be used potentially in future civil lawsuits if they decide to go that route?"
http://youtube.com/watch?v=7NlOaNmUVzU
"What information, if any, do they have on the users right now that could be used potentially in future civil lawsuits if they decide to go that route?"
Jesus how presumptuous to keep asking this. What makes you think Paine knows? Further, what makes you think it's his responsibility to tell you anyway? It's not his job to ease your worries or calm your fears. And do you really expect that? Have you been in an OiNK forum? Are the mods known for their loving, warm, gentle touch?
You knew what you were getting into when you downloaded your first torrent. You scared? I don't blame you. I am too, but the fact is that Paine more than likely doesn't know. He's not the one who's house was raided. He's not the one out on bail. I'm sure OiNK himself can't divulge all the details of what went on, so even though Paine has an inside lane to the info, it doesn't mean it's the info that's gonna make you sleep better tonight.
Whilst no IPs were recorded in the snatch list, The users last IP was recorded in the users table. And the userid is in the snatched table. So with a simple sql join you have snatch list with IPs.
"users last IP was recorded in the users table. And the userid is in the snatched table. So with a simple sql join you have snatch list with IPs."
Interesting. What I remember from OInk though was that only recent snatches would show in the profile. Am I remembering wrong?
Also, it would be presumptive and not solid to make the case that a snatch occurred at that ip. all that shows is that the user logged on at that ip. you'd have to presume the snatch occurred there -- it could've happened anywhere.
Oh well, guess you will just have to buy your music and movies now. Can't deal with it? Make your own music and movies and put them up on a server with creative commons license.
your kind of worthless
Any word on Becky? :(
Gut Reaction, should I hold on to my torrent files just in case, or do you think the server will need to get new ones if/when the site goes back up?
Should I be concerned if I had my torrent client running for 12 hours or so after the takedown? Can they tell what I was seeding?
(And thanks for providing answers to all the panicking users like myself.)
I'm worried about the mods, not to mention TMT. I miss Becky and Nimenard.
i miss you all dearly
i'd love to know how oink had managed to mask the ip in the peers table.
They usually pull the plug on the server in order to not tamper with evidence.
heyo! thanks for answering all our questions
just curious why you dont think you'll hear from TMT for a long time?
telegraph article
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/25/ninternet125.xml
Thanks for the word, paine. We'll all be seeing each other again soon in some form or another, I'm sure. May take some time. We'll make it.
From that Telegraph article
"Detectives are thought to be analysing the databases for details of the invitation system and members’ downloads.
A spokesman for Cleveland Police, responsible the Middlesbrough inquiries, said: “It is too early to tell if we will go after individuals, it all depends on what we find.”
Oh no way, those quotes are from that article?! No way!
paine, i am offering t-shirts/sweatshirts for a lower price than cafe press
I have all the information on my blog, so if you want to post it or whatever
http://m3unit07.blogspot.com
Just sent this email to a client. I've no idea whether they've even heard of Oink but... anyway...I'm going to send something similar to all my clients. From now on, if they want, they'll get a free song of my choice. Swamp the world:
Thing attached here.
Stop being so apologetic about making changes. You're being way too empathetic for your new role.
Would it be be practical if I sent you a song with every email? I think that's something I should be doing with everyone right now. Just because.
Love,
Bear
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OiNK
http://www.demonbaby.com/blog/2007/10/when-pigs-fly-death-of-oink-birth-of.html
http://janisian.com/article-internet_debacle.html
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