The Daily Swarm

News round-up here.

UPDATE: Idolator: The OiNK Fallout: Should Its Ex-Users Be Watching Their Backs?:

An American intellectual property litigator who asked to remain anonymous:

They should be very, very scared. There are at least two reasons why this is not just your average, everyday, run-of-the-mill file sharing copyright infringement: this involves music that has not yet been commercially released, and money changed hands.

Because the music has not yet been commercially released, as a practical matter, the fair use defense effectively disappears.

[...]

The legal issue of what constitutes infringement in the US stays the same—there still has to be an infringing act in the US, or importation into the US. There are probably differences among the protections that US, UK, Netherlands, and EU law afford to subscriber information, but unfortunately, I don’t know the other countries’ law, so I don’t know whether those differences are material.

As far as money goes, remember that “commercial advantage or private financial gain” can include the benefits of barter and the like. So the fact that, in your [description of OiNK’s ratio rules], “they had to assist in infringement in order to keep infringing” might be enough.

Oink.cd:

This site has been closed as a result of a criminal investigation by IFPI, BPI, Cleveland Police and the Fiscal Investigation Unit of the Dutch Police (FIOD ECD) into suspected illegal music distribution.

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

From the IFPI press release:

Pre-release leaks are one of the most damaging forms of internet piracy that is currently eroding legitimate sales of music across the world. Recorded music sales fell by more than a third internationally in the last six years, and independent studies show that a major factor in this decline has been internet users accessing peer-to-peer networks to steal music online.

Pre-release piracy is particularly damaging to sales as it leads to early mixes and unfinished versions of artists’ recordings circulating on the internet months ahead of the release.

Closed internet communities known as “ripping groups” often get demos, early mixes of commercial releases and promotional copies of pre-release albums in advance of release with a view to distributing the music as widely and as far ahead of release as possible. Each ripping group gains cachet amongst its peers for being the first to get new music and uses torrent sites to distribute the music as widely as possible.

OiNK operated an exclusive membership scheme by which users were only invited to join the site if they could prove that they had music to offer. They were encouraged to distribute recordings in the torrent file format with other OiNK members, and have to keep posting such music to the site to maintain their membership.

Once an album had been posted on the OiNK website, the users that download that music then passed the content to other websites, forums and blogs, where multiple copies were made.

Within a few hours of a popular pre-release track being posted on the OiNK site, hundreds of copies can be found further down the illegal online supply chain.

The recording industry says that the closure of the site is an important victory in the industry’s bid to tackle copyright theft.

Jeremy Banks, Head of the IFPI’s Internet Anti-Piracy Unit, said: “OiNK was central to the illegal distribution of pre-release music online. This was not a case of friends sharing music for pleasure. This was a worldwide network that got hold of music they did not own the rights to and posted it online.

“This operation was a classic example of how the recording industry can work with law enforcement agencies to prove that illegal operations on the internet are not immune from detection.”

BPI Chief Executive Geoff Taylor said: “BitTorrent has fast become the most popular file sharing client, and while the technology is now commonplace, closed criminal networks such as OiNK take time to develop; make no mistake, this operation will cause major disruption to this illegal activity.

“The government is now well aware of the scale of damage this theft causes to music – copyright theft starves the creative industries of income, which both threatens future investment in artists and vandalises our culture.

“That this individual now faces criminal charges will deter some but no doubt others will be looking move into this territory, and the authorities must keep up the pressure to deter the digital freeloaders.”