Awesome

Needless to say, the court's recent decision that Alan Ellis is not guilty is, to put it mildly, awesome.

So ends the saga, and Alan can get on with his life.

What's in Canada

See my previous post about What.cd changing hosting, except change 'Sweden' to 'Canada'.

They seem pretty confident about the security and sustainability of their new hosts, so good luck to them.

OiNK's bail extended

Following another round of questioning, OiNK's bail has been extended again, this time until May 6th.

What's in Sweden

What.cd has completed it's move to the Sweden-based PRQ Hosting several hours ahead of it's December 1st deadline.

As the server has changed IP address, some users are having some trouble reaching the site. The following advice has been posted on their front page for people experiencing a problem:

1. Check your hosts file. If you edited it when we changed servers before, it'll still be forwarding the what.cd domain name to the old server. Just remove the what.cd lines, and all should be well.

2. If that doesn't work, flush dns. In windows, you do this by going start -> run, typing in cmd, then typing in ipconfig /flushdns.

3. If the above two methods have no effect, then your problems are most likely caused by caching in your DNS servers. They'll be sorted out automatically in the next 12 hours.

Note: Their news article contains an error, which I have corrected here. ifconfig is not a valid command on Windows XP, and I can only assume they meant ipconfig.

Note 2: Someone in the comments asked about how to check the HOSTS file. Here's a great article on doing just that. http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hostsfaq.htm#Editor

The Mysterious Project Gazelle

What.cd users were presented with a riddle on the front page of their website today.

What begins with a G, ends with a E, and can run at 50 miles per hour?

The answer, it seems, is Gazelle (not Giraffe as I first thought -- they can only manage 32 miles per hour), and once you input the correct answer you're presented with a link to Project Gazelle.

There's no information yet as to what Project Gazelle actually is. If you know, please leave a comment. Wild speculation is heartily encouraged.

On another note, What.cd have secured hosting at PRQ and expect to move their operation there ahead of the December 1st deadline that was imposed on them by Leaseweb.

Edit: Project Gazelle is apparently the new torrent site source that What is making. If he pulls this off, you could be looking at a replacement for the ageing yet ubiquitous TBSource.

Edit 2: What.cd have now posted a news bulletin about Project Gazelle:

Well, I'm sure you've all seen our latest riddle, What begins with a G, ends with a E, and can run at 50 miles per hour, so I guess its time for an official announcement. The answer is 'gazelle', and if you guess correctly, the page links you to http://projectgazelle.org. Project Gazelle is the official name of our new sourcecode.

Our sourcecode is meant to be the foundation of a high volume website, and has been designed around that concept. It has full memcached support, and the vast majority of the pages should be able to be run using only one to three queries - for the end user, this means "lots more users, and a very fast website". This is a pretty impressive feat, allowing a website to handle tens of thousands of users on even the weakest servers. Furthermore, the entire sourcecode is modularized - this allows people to easily create their own features, or variations of features already implemented.

The sourcecode is well organized, and commented. This means that users with only a basic knowledge of PHP and MySQL will be able to run a fully functional and scalable torrent site. In addition to ease of use, our sourcecode allows for the easy development of additional features by the general public. We feel that this is one of the stronger points of our code.

We have also taken a note from the previous issues with our current source, and are writing Project Gazelle with security in mind.

Development is coming along at a steady pace, and we expect to have a closed beta running within the next 6 weeks. We'll give you updates on the development every time we have something to get excited about, but for the time being, just keep on using the current site - all of the important data will be transferred over when we're done.

Frozen Waffles

Paypal has frozen the account of Waffles.fm citing "unusual/high-risk activity".

Having recently been through something very similar with the SaveOiNK.com fund we know what this is like.

The Waffles admins will have to jump through many hoops, make a lot of phone calls, and if they don't already have one; buy a fax machine.

This couldn't have come at a worse time for Waffles. With LeaseWeb forcing all torrent trackers off their network with a deadline of December 1st, time is swiftly running out to arrange alternate hosting.

In a risky move, one of the site admins is taking the full hit of the replacement sever on his credit card. In the mean-time they've set up alternative donation arrangements with Amazon.

I'm certain Douglas Adams wrote the following with Paypal in mind:

Vogons. They are one of the most unpleasant races in the galaxy. Not actually evil, but bad-tempered, bureaucratic, officious, and callous. They wouldn't even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the ravenous Bug-Blatter Beast of Traal without orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, lost, found again, queried, subjected to public inquiry, lost and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighter. On no account should you allow a Vogon to read poetry to you.

Let's hope What's Paypal account isn't soon to suffer the same fate.

...

In response to you know who: I'm male, you idiot.

PayPal fixed

After 3 days of passing paperwork back and forth, PayPal has enabled the option to send a gift to OiNK again. Visit www.saveoink.com if you wish to do so.

Edit: Some people are asking "why have a legal fund when no charges have been brought against him?" The fact is that there are still high costs involved even at this stage, mostly solicitors fees, as well as the cost of living during this very testing time. The legal fund is needed now, as well as later.

Also we felt it best to have one official fund, even if not needed yet, in order to keep scamsites at bay.

PayPal Problem

It seems PayPal have put the kibosh on the SaveOiNK funding at the moment. Countermeasures are under way but the process could take several days before the account is unblocked and accepting gifts again. Please be patient, they have a lot of hoops to jump through but I see no reason why this won't get resolved successfully.



Above image courtesy of http://www.paypalsucks.com

Fake RIAA Emails

Members of What.cd have today received an email purportedly from the RIAA. The email is fake. Do not believe its contents.

However, what it does prove is that the recent SQL Injection attacks and major lapses in security at What.cd have meant that the user database has been harvested. If you have an account at What.cd, consider your email address and possibly password as no longer private.

Edit: An official comment response from What.cd:

skullyzero said...
We have a grip on our security.
The passwords are stored in salted hashes so everyones accounts are safe.
The attackers got email addresses and thats all.
We do know who it was
If you signed up anytime after last friday your information is safe

Edit 2: The What.cd admins have posted a response on their website, and have tracked down the culprit, a 14 year old kid and his brother. They've also posted his contact details in case anyone feels like writing to him to point out the error of his ways.

Edit 3: OK, not SQL injection attacks, but the kid having access to the server upon which the site was hosted. Also most of the kid's contact information has been removed from what.cd.

Save OiNK

Many of you have been asking about it, now it is here. To help OiNK with possible legal costs in the near future, a Paypal account has now been setup where fellow OiNK'ers can feel free to give a gift.
Please visit the website for all details.

And before you ask, yes this one is 100% legit and piggy approved.
And OiNK.cd has the news too.

SaveOiNK.com

Speaking personally

I quite like waffles.fm. The SQL injection attack on what.cd last night has me a little worried about them, but I guess it's a beginners mistake that they will learn from. Hopefully so will waffles. These sites are barely a few weeks old, so I applaud the progress they have made in this short time. Many of the features that were present on OiNK have been implemented in some form, and the staff are beginning to settle into a routine. Both have a good user base and the users are busy linking their collections. I sincerely hope both sites do well, they've got some big shoes to fill.

Edit: I'm hearing reports that What.cd is suffering from another SQL injection attack. Be extremely careful if you plan on visiting.

Edit 2: The SQL injection attacks continue. This doesn't bode well for What.cd:



Edit 3: I'm not Paine, I'm azc. The clue is below where it says "POSTED BY AZC". Hope that clears up some confusion.

And now, in the interest of equal time, here is a message from the National Institute of Pancakes:

It reads, and I quote, Fuck waffles.

No. Really. Fuck waffles.
Waffles.fm is the torrent site equivalent of Halo 3. Overhyped, mediocre, and surrounded by a cloud of fanboys so thick you'd need a chainsaw to cut through it.

I've been wanting to say this ever since they started with their crap, but I've had the decency to keep my mouth shut until they've had a chance to get off the ground.
They've had their chance. I've seen nothing but fail come from them and their users -- "Expanding the hydra" does not involve roving around the internet screaming "WHAT.CD SUX! LIBBLE IS FOR FAGS! STMUSIC? MOAR LIKE STD LOLOLOL".

Ever since they first started their site, they've been lying their fucking asses off, and I'm getting sick and tired of it. I'll start with the most obvious one.

Their name. They claim to have had that name in the works for months... despite their URL (waffles.fm) not being registered until AFTER (renewal date of 28th) the homepage of oink.cd was changed to have the link to brokep's blog (dated 27th oct) with the collection of what to use sites.

Soon after that, they began asking old oinkers to "confirm they were a member" at oink.cd. Those of you who've been paying any attention at all lately will know that there is no fucking way in hell that they could've "confirmed" anything. Any idiot can forge an email, and any other idiot can forge a passkey or screenshot. The fact is, they have *NOTHING* to confirm it against, as guess fucking what, they didn't have the passkeys, email addresses, or any other things to "confirm" it against. So yeah, good job on that one.

Next up, their lies about the "DDoS" attack. They fucked up and tried to blame it on someone else. Gee mister smart arse running the site -- perhaps raising the announce interval away from 30 seconds might help, you daft pricks. Just where exactly did you pull that 90 mbps figure out of anyway, cause it sure sounds like it came out of your ass. Let's not go into the other major fuckups they have all over their site... like maybe SQL injection vulnerabilities. Posting users passhashes on their front page... yeah. Great admin work. TB Rules Broken, anyone? Maybe it's just this claim in invite emails that's stopping people speaking up -- "IMPORTANT: Waffles.fm has been in development for less than a week, [...] trackers like what.cd have been in the pipeline for months". That statement about what.cd is so full of bullshit it's unbelievable. Making cheap shots like that at other trackers is just uncalled for and isn't a hallmark of a good site... unless they're making fun of Demonoid.

Their vague attempts at officialism, ripping the text directly from the rules page without understanding half of what they were talking about -- half of their staff (you know, the ones who don't have the balls to be listed on staff.php to provide help and support when users need it) couldn't spot a transcode if it walked up to them wearing a t-shirt saying "I'M A TRANSCODE!" and bitchslapped them with their own hand. Their claim of having an excellent reputation for catching cheaters was the icing on the cake there, though I must know how exactly they plan on catching invite sellers without certain members of the staff we had.
Pop quiz hot shots, I get invites from 20 people around the internet more than happy to invite me. I signup a dozen fake email addresses with various providers, and get each of them to send one to a different email. I then sell the invite URLs on ebay. How are you going to catch me, them, or even the inviter? Oh wait.

Let me make this painfully clear: I shit on waffles.fm, almost as much as they shit on their users. Any confusion regarding the matter should now be completely and utterly annihilated. This is My (Paine's) opinion, and my opinion alone -- I haven't conferred with any of the other old oink staff before posting this, because frankly they'd probably try to talk me out of it.

Thanks for the repeated harassment on IRC by the way, that's what really made me want to do this.

In other news, Canapial's done it again.


Just to fan the flames of hatred, I'm turning off comment moderation just to watch the fanboys, invite beggers, idiots and spammers, come out in force. I'll turn moderation on when I wake up again, and you'll see why I've had it on for so long.

Edit: A reply from one of their staff

Regarding the name, it came originally from a project "wafflehat"
which we later merged with our team. We registered the domain name a
bit late, but whatever. Don't believe me if you don't want to, but we
didn't name it after the "waffles" posting on oink.cd.

This entire project stemmed off of our love for what oink was. Hence
our intention was to adopt the oink community. It takes alot of work,
to sort through thousands of emails and make sure screenshots aren't
fake. Yes, fakes get in. The fact of the matter is the majority of the
people that get invited were in fact oink members, or great new
contributors.The system isn't perfect, I know.

That "90mbps" figure for the DDoS attack was, in fact, pulled straight
out of dead1's ass. Notice how he isn't on our team any more? We
wanted to distance ourselves from the scriptkiddie bullshit he brought
to the team. Not to mention, if we were going to have a staff member
call the wired journalist, it would be TO REMOVE THE FUCKING ARTICLE,
not make it official.

We're tying our best to replicate oink - we are copying a lot of the
rules exactly. Our staff obviously isn't final, but we have a couple new ones here that know what they're doing, they've been downloading a shit load of torrents
to check for transcodes already. I don't know where we've claimed to
have an excellent reputation for catching cheaters, because we
certainly don't.

I think I actually failed to consider that way to sell invites. I
might have it reduced to one invite per new user, instead of two.

There's been a lot of hype around to replace oink.. and it's turned
sour mostly. So much bullshit flows through the irc channels, oink
memorial forums, and blogs. What.cd, libble, etc and waffles members
have smeared each other in public places endlessly. All I can really
say is this is out of our control. There are two goals to this
project: To replace Oink as the most convenient place to get any album
ever at full download speed in v0.

The second goal would be to better the musical community. Corny I
know, but hear this out. I've spent time speculating the future of
online music downloading with a couple other staff members, and we all
agreed that we want to push towards websites like these being legal.
What with NIN and Radiohead already releasing their music for free,
it's only a matter of time before bullshit record labels become
obsolete. We could have artists officially support having their albums
available on waffles.fm, and give them control over what the users see
& hear... all speculation, yeah.

My point being, none of this is to steal the glory from the death of
OiNK as the replacement. Newport was kicked from the team because
that's what he was here for.

So I don't know why you would hate us, other than the fact that the
amount of hype has splattered shit in the feces of large names such as
yourself. Running your blog, the only website left with any "oink
officialness" left, I can only imagine what you've dealt with.
----

Make up your own minds.

This is not a place to beg for waffles/what invites.

Comments asking for invites are rejected immediately.

Also, this blog is not mine: http://teh-paine.blogspot.com, although they do say impersonation is the sincerest form of flattery... or something to that effect.

It's also getting to be far too much effort to point out every single one of the scam site's URLs, so in short... if it looks like this, it's a scam.

edit: ... thongs are now available in the cafepress stores. Why? Because oorza is a weirdo.
edit2: Spreadshirt black hoodies
There's a few other colours in there too, click "buy" to customise it.. a bit. I couldn't do it the same way as I did on the cafepress ones because spreadshirt has such a limited colour palette (this is what I was working with), but I think they turned out pretty well. Now that I know what I'm doing with spreadshirt (everybody point and laugh), any other products/designs you want added? :|
edit3: How to get fanboys out in force in one easy step
/me points to new poll
edit4: Tank tops added to the cafepress stores by request.

Hosting found

Thanks to everyone who offered hosting, the information has been passed along to the party concerned. If you haven't already been contacted, you weren't chosen, sorry.

On another topic, ar33ome3 has come up with this awesome OiNK-themed Halloween picture. I've posted it below, with his permission.



The desktop-sized version can be found at his blog, http://enjoys.it/2007/10/31/oink-halloween-wallpaper/

Thanks, ar33ome3!

It's rant time.

Apparently, people still haven't got it into their heads that I'm not making a fucking penny.


So this means I get to have a nice little rant.

Let's start by addressing the comments specifically.

First off, if it's not obvious, I'm not black-cats. The cafepress stores allow you to mark up prices on t-shirts to make a direct profit. If black-cats do this (frankly I don't know if they do, or particularly care), then so be it. The point is, I do not. People don't seem to realise that the mark up is entirely customisable. The markup I have set is $0.00. Don't believe me? Create a cafepress account yourself and start a store (it's free), you'll see the inner workings for yourself, as well as see the base prices for shirts, which mine are set at.

Secondly, the "affiliate" scheme you mention is not something I am taking part in. I've already posted screenshots in the blog of the cafepress account's finances -- a profit of exactly $0.00

Thirdly, while this is not in any way money related, I'd love to know on how you plan on "banning me from the oink community for life". But whatever, kids need to have their vague delusions of being able to do things that make no sense.

If I wanted to make money, I could easily have done so without going to stupid extremes. I did the cafepress store because people asked me to. I'm also looking into alternative stores (specifically ones that do black hoodies).

An example of how I could've done this? Adsense. Bacon Phat, the person running the "oink memorial" blog, claims to have made a total of $140 from running that page, which he seems to believe he has somehow earned. I've been running this page and haven't turned it on once. If I had it on, I could have easily made far more than that amount.

If it's not painfully clear yet, I'm not making a fucking penny. Shut the fuck up and get a clue.

If anyone else wants to be a fucking smart arse, I'll show them the rest of the crap going through the cafepress store. Maybe that will make them shut the fuck up, although I'd hardly be surprised if it wouldn't.

Stop trying to hide behind anonymity kids, I've seen your comments on torrentfreak and oink memorial. Grow a pair of balls, if you have a problem with me, come into IRC and we'll discuss it. I'm not in the mood for taking shit from 12 year old kids with attitude problems.

Scamsite news: stay away from 6x.to / the ones I've already mentioned previously.
Other news: Don't bother giving your old passkey (announce url) to other sites asking for them as "Proof" you were a member of oink -- they have no way of checking it's legitimacy. (They don't have the databases, remember).

Who invited Trent Reznor?

New York Magazine has a very interesting interview online with Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor and Saul Williams.

http://nymag.com/daily/...trent_reznor_and_saul_williams.html

The most interesting part is this:

"Trent: I'll admit I had an account there and frequented it quite often. At the end of the day, what made OiNK a great place was that it was like the world's greatest record store. Pretty much anything you could ever imagine, it was there, and it was there in the format you wanted. If OiNK cost anything, I would certainly have paid, but there isn't the equivalent of that in the retail space right now." ...

"People on those boards, they're grateful for the person that uploaded it — they're the hero. They're not stealing it because they're going to make money off of it; they're stealing it because they love the band. I'm not saying that I think OiNK is morally correct, but I do know that it existed because it filled a void of what people want."

Now if that ain't something :)

Everyone Digg it!
Get this article around as fast and far as you can.

Edit: Number #1 in Digg's Top10 with 1688 diggs right now :)
Also, please stop the discussion about who invited Trent and what his username could have been. It doesn't matter at all.



Thanks to Canapial for another comicstrip.

Got a spare server?

OiNK.cd, the number 1 site in the world for waffle recipies, is looking for a new home to host a simple website.

You'll need to be able to provide name servers, hosting and bandwidth, as well as remote administration capabilities for these.

What's in it for you? A warm fuzzy feeling.

If you're able to help, make a comment and leave an email address. Start your post with [DNP] if you don't want the comment published.

edit: shirt news
Spreadshirt rejected the SVG because it apparently used too many colours, so I've got canapial working on it. :P

edit2: We have received plenty of offers for simple hosting. Thanks to everyone! PLEASE STOP SUBMITTING

More of canapial's awesome artwork

T-Shirt news: Black hoodies could soon be available!
I've uploaded the SVG of the piggy and cow image (not che though, I don't have it handy) to spreadshirt. I have to wait (up to 48 hours) for them to confirm it (no guaruntee they will, but they should) and then the store will be up and running.

If you want Canapial's latest comic (or the hydra) on a T-shirt (the one above), let me know and I'll have a chat with him.

I'm going to make this painfully clear:
We are not affiliated with either waffles.fm or what.cd, although a few of us are members at one of them.

T-shirt news: The nfoink cafe press store is being ran by Unimatrix0. I've told him that I'll set six corners of the internet on his ass if anything untoward happens, so knock yourself out in his store.
edit: No, he's not making a profit.

Scamsite news: add .6x.to to your list of scam site addresses. It's all the same site.

Hell, I'll personally cough up £50 to the guy who brings me his severed head on a plate.

More new shirts...

This time starring the piggies from the old Canapial_3 banner (the one I use here).

Moo!
Thanks Canapial. :D

For those of you who missed it, he also made this image.



For the people asking for black hoodies, cafepress don't seem to do them, if there's a large enough demand (4 or 5 people, to be honest) I can start looking through other sites to see who does.

Scamsite news

Remember, the following are all scams. Obviously, do not visit them.

oink.cx.la is still up
oink.we.bs is dead
oink.s4u.0lx.net> is dead
oink.pytalhost.com is dead
oink.pms.cc is dead
savy.ath.cx/OiNK/ is dead
oink.6x.to is up

Again, please don't be stupid enough to give money to that scam.

As predicted, November 1st came and went, and they're still making excuses and asking for money.

edit: For those still confused on how to get into IRC...
1. Download and install an IRC client of your choice (common choices are xchat for linux, xchat aqua for Mac, and mIRC for windows.)
2. Connect to irc://irc.p2p-network.net.
3. Type /msg nickserv register yourpassword your@email
4. Type /join #oink
5. Revel in the intelligent discussion we have going, for example:
Paine> Someone say something stupid
asrivat> something stupid.

edit 2: For the tech smarts
- SSL is on port 7000
- vhosts are available in #vhosts
NoOneButMe> #vhosts vhosts are only temporary
NoOneButMe> Might be worth mentioning that?
- hostnames are partially spoofed automatically.

edit 3: A lot of people are asking about http://waffles.fm
A few of it's owners (at least, they claimed to be) have contacted me via IRC and said it's going to be a new tracker. It's not 'endorsed' by us, however it doesn't look like a scam.

It's not really much of a scam if it doesn't ask for money ;)

EDIT 4: .cx.la and waffles.fm are not the same site
They just both happened to pick a November 1st release date. It's pretty obvious that the scamsite is now going to use it as their "final destination" on November 1st too, though.

I *told* you we're just like Google!

More evidence if needed that the site was not so dissimilar to Google.

http://torrentfreak.com/oink-supports-the-hydra-071027/

"After being hijacked by the police for a few days, OiNK.cd returned to its rightful owner. The tracker won’t return anytime soon but OiNK.cd is now linking to a Google search that links to a list of private BitTorrent trackers."

Digg it now! http://digg.com/tech_news/OiNK_Makes_a_Statement...

Edit: Some people seem confused about what a Hydra is. Wikipedia explains.

About the T-shirts

Someone had the fucking gall to say I was making money from the T-shirts


(click it)

All I can say to that person is:
Fuck you. I haven't made a penny.

Just to piss him off further, new shirts! http://www.cafepress.com/opplovepiggy
Of course, no profit is made from the sale of these items.

In other news,
http://blog.brokep.com/2007/10/27/what-to-use-instead-of-oink-waffleswaffleswaffles
Brokep from TPB's blog has a nicely compiled list of alternative torrent sites.

Remember when I said waffles were awesome?

I wasn't kidding.

Demonbaby article

If you have some spare time, grab yourself some coffee, cookies or beer and give this article by Rob on Demonbaby a read. You shouldn't miss it.

http://www.demonbaby.com/...death-of-oink-birth-of.html

THIS JUST IN: Waffles are awesome.

You can shut up about t-shirts now.

http://www.cafepress.com/opplove

EDIT: Red logo shirts are now up!
http://www.cafepress.com/opplovered

No profit is being made on these shirts.

BOiNK is being ran by the pirate bay, not us.

Scam site news: .cx.la down for bandwidth exceeded, we.bs down after a hell of a DDOS, current scam site to watch out for is http://oink.s4u.0lx.net/ . Once again, that's a scam site, do not give any money to it.


edit: For those asking about the site's code, OiNK has made it clear that he has no objection to it being released. It'll be up to the party with access to it to do so.

IRC moved.

(again)
irc://irc.p2p-network.net/6667 (Port 7000 is SSL)
Wait 180 seconds (3 minutes)
/msg nickserv register password email
/join #oink

See you there. Hopefully for longer this time...



In regards to this Torrentfreak article (http://torrentfreak.com/...-071026/):

We confirm that OiNK is in Berlin right now at the 'Oil of the 21st century' conference. Other parts of the article still remain speculations at this time.

Notice about OiNK Memorial

Contrary to what Bacon Phat is implying, OiNK Memorial does not have "insider information."

OiNK Memorial relies solely on guesses, assumptions, the distorted truth of the media, relaying public information, and this blog. There is nothing - nothing - official about OiNK Memorial.

You'll also notice they have banner advertising, so they're making money from this. Not cool.

Edit: yes, the we.bs site is the same scam site being ran by the .cx.la guy(s).

Another reminder about scam sites

Once again, we do not currently have a donation fund for OiNK. Don't give money to sites like oink (dot) cx (dot) la -- They're probably just another site trying to make money from you. Again, none of the old staff are affiliated with this in any way.

edit: In case I wasn't painfully clear, nobody but the admins had access to the databases and code. There is no way for a site like .cx.la to have them. The reason why they're saying they won't give a URL until November 1st? They don't have one. They're taking in as much money as possible.

EDIT2: Comments are now moderated
Spammers from .cx.la were littering the comments, all comments must be reviewed by myself. I realise this doesn't look good on my part, but I have to do what I have to do. I'll still let you have your little fantasies about the RIAA and government coming for you though. ;)

Pedro and Keith

Most of you probably know this already: http://oink.cd/index2.html

Please do not interpret too much into this. Nobody can say who those two people are. My personal guess would be that Pedro is probably someone in the police department, who is halfway capable of creating a website. And Keith is some sort of investigator? As said, nobody can say for sure. Try not to involve yourselves in unnecessary speculations in this matter, which only leads to more panic among the users. Thank you.

There is no reason to believe that Pedro was some sort of undercover person,
and that he is the one responsible for getting the site shutdown.

In case the index2.html has been removed by now, here is a screenshot.

We are not affiliated with "oinkybank"

Just a note here -- There is still no official donation fund. I.e. "Oinkybank" is not anything any of the staff, nor oink himself has been involved with.

None of us have been approached by the owners of that site either. Looks like someone's making a killing off our piggy backs.

EDIT: A few people have been asking if we know about the index2.html on oink.cd -- Yes, we did, and pasted it in the #oink channel.

Xevion IRC, Userlimit and Key added

do not /who the #channel on join

For xchat users: /set irc_who_join 0 in your client.
For mIRC users: turn off irc -> options -> show nicks on join

Should stop you all getting disconnected on join (This channel's rather huge)

EDIT: This has now been fixed.

UPDATE: The amount of users being active was getting really high and becoming a stress on the IRC network. We had to set a userlimit for the time being. If you get a channel full message, please try again a bit later.

UPDATE #2: It was needed to add a key to the channel, which is 'bacon'

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.

Some of you guys have been asking for logs of IRC last night

So here it is, shamelessly lifted from http://dot-slash-csc.iblogger.org/oinkfaq.html

friggy> you just get bailed for free?
OiNK> yes
--
smartface> does the paypal account have any funds on it ATM?
OiNK> it had some, and the account has been permanently limited
smartface> did they actually question you?
OiNK> of course, for hours
OiNK> the police had very limited technical knowledge, which made the interview quite amusing actually.
OiNK> i wasn't willing to teach them how to use a computer
OiNK> they actually wanted me to teach them how to set up a website
OiNK> i just told them to google it.
smartface> have you become a millionarie with our donations?
OiNK> no
smartface> are you planned for a trial anytime soon?
OiNK> the earliest date for trial is 26th december - though highly unlikely
--
Xenafor> IS YOUR FATHER OKAY AS WELL?
OiNK> my father is fine.
OiNK> my father was not arrested, though they did take his work laptop
Xenafor> Are you a vegetarian?
OiNK> yes.
--
apelure> what does the carges about fraud mean?
OiNK> i've not been charged ...
--
knifeboy> Did they do the good cop/bad cop routine?
OiNK> no
--
Stormx2> Everyone is first and foremost concerned for you and everything, but at the back of our minds (I think) we're interested in what you think will happen the the pink palace. Obviously you won't have a starring roll, but will the backups be destroyed?
OiNK> why would backups be destroyed?
--
j2los> do you think at minimum the forums will be restored as a community for discussing music?
OiNK> i don't know
j2los> do you think it is absurd that only now that the site has been taken down has it been deemed notable enough for a wikipedia article?
OiNK> i found that amusing, yes
OiNK> i'm glad the article is staying neutral
--
guildmast> Are there any plans for an official OiNK donations fund we can feel comfortable donating to?
OiNK> not yet
--
ftdrs> seriously though, what did they accuse you of?
OiNK> conspiracy to defraud and copyright infringements
--
maxdoubt> do you have/need legal representation?
OiNK> i'm still deciding on legal advice
--
Kevix> did you have any warning before hand that the knock opn your door was coming?
OiNK> no
--
Yawg> did you anticipate a raid in the past? Did you take any precautions regarding site design and logs and whatnot to protect the community?
OiNK> the logs we store aren't enough to inciminate users
--
Gl1mw0rm> are you still the rigtfull owner of the oink.cd domain?
OiNK> unclear
--
Barth> what about the recent security/privacy changes to the site and the irc? was that a coincidence or did you see something coming?
OiNK> coincidence
--
midnightgt> (without incriminating anyone) is there any copy of the source anywhere? Would you be in support of a second coming of the website? How do you think this reflects on the war on file sharing? (Certainly I do not feel like we are losing)
OiNK> sorry, no comment :)
--
lhnz> Why exactly did the cops want you to make a website for them?:P :D
OiNK> dunno
--
ATF> did you get fired from work?
OiNK> yes
--
gleam> do you think you or anyone else will ever hear from tmt again? :)
OiNK> no
--
MooIsTooWrong> do you think most of the people in this channel are asking asshat questions?
OiNK> yes
--
uQ1> What grounds did your work fire you?
OiNK> i'm not going to go into that, sorry.

And now, something from this morning (after he'd seen the guardian article)
OiNK> they got my company wrong, but besides that, it's quite a good article
OiNK> the police were here around 30 mins ago, and they were not happy one bit when they left
OiNK> they asked me how i was coping with all the media coming around
OiNK> i said "i don't mind it at all, i'm just telling them the truth, unlike you"

A message to the banner creators (jsart, sirbitter, antec, canapial, bluelemon etc.)

Banner/Logo creators, please send us your original vector art of your designs!

Get in touch with us!

Telegraph article up.

I suppose a few have you have read the daily telegraph article on their website - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/.../ninternet125.xml

There's a lot of half-truths in that, probably the reporter not understanding.

"Computer equipment and documentation seized from his home, his place of work and his father’s home"
Only OiNK's home equipment has been seized, his father's laptop was also taken, as well as OiNK's xbox!

"was contracted to work as an IT consultant for Virgin Media’s contact centre"
He was not contracted for Virgin Media.

"The website’s server, based in Amsterdam, was closed down by Dutch Police last week."
The servers have been up and running fine until Tuesday morning, a few hours after OiNK had been arrested in the UK.

"According to users, Oink had a daily throughput the equivalent of five million songs and registered members were able to download around 1,000 songs."
The site did not transfer any songs at all, and the number of songs for users were in no way limited.

"leaked on an OINK site"
There only was one site.

"Users were offered the chance to buy a range of branded merchandise"
Merchandise sold through Cafepress.com did not get us any profit, all items have been sold at bare minimum. OiNK saw no money of this.

“Music so good it could make your tail curl”
The banner slogan at the time of the shutdown was "because moo just does not sound right".
We had other slogans long before that.




In other news, Xevion IRC got hit by some botnets last night -- hard.

They handed out a ton of bans, I'm sure it was interesting for them to say the least.

At the moment irc://arrogant.xevion.net with port 6667 is stable, however that is NOT an SSL port. The SSL port is 6670, if you feel like trying.

UPDATE: Userlimit was needed, please try later if you get a channel full message. Also we had to add a key to join, which is 'bacon'.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What happened?
A: On Tuesday, OiNK was arrested at his house in a "raid", they also "raided" his fathers house and work place. His computer and various other items were taken (including his xbox, but atleast they left the Wii). Later on Dutch Police seized the OiNK.cd servers hosted in the Netherlands. A few hours later OiNK was released on bail, but not charged. His father is fine too, he was not arrested.

Q: Do I have to worry about my password?
A: Passwords have never been stored as plain text anywhere. Only as salted MD5 hashes. Also, police or industry agencies do not care about your password. If it lets you sleep any better, change it on all other trackers and such. But it is not required at all.

Q: Do I as a normal user need to be scared?
A: No. The logs stored were not enough to incriminate any of our users. They have better things to do than hunt down 180,000 Britney Spears fans.

Q: Did you log IP adresses with all the transfers?
A: No of course we did not.

Q: What about those who donated?
A: Honestly, we do not know. Of course you cannot expect to get any donated money back. Accounts have been seized, so far nobody knows whats gonna happen. If you did not donate like thousands of dollars, you should not worry too much.

Q: What about that other admin?
A: The former staff will not comment on any questions regarding the situation of him.

Q: Where can I donate?
A: Updated: A site has been set up for collecting gifts towards the legal defence fund. See http://oink.cd for details.

Q: Now what?
A: OiNK has been bailed until 21st December pending further investigations, no charges have currently been brought against him. The Police will go through the seized material.

Q: The future of the OiNK community?
A: To be frank? We don't know. None of the moderators had access to either the code or databases, and OiNK's possessions were confiscated. We have a boat, just we don't have anything to paddle with.


Kind regards,

your former staff of OiNK's Pink Palace

"Official" OiNK IRC channel

The staff have decided on a location to have an "official" IRC.

irc://irc.xevion.net / #oink

Standard port 6667, SSL on 6670
You need a registered nickname to join the channel. To do so, type
/msg nickserv register

Hope to see you there.

UPDATE: IRC is back working normal, thanks to the IRCOps.

Sit down, and shut the fuck up.

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.