Remember all that smug talk about the “multi-headed hydra” of BitTorrent sites that spring up after OiNK went to piggy heaven? Well–shock!–those heads may have gotten a little too big a little too quickly. A tipster writes: “Apparently the user database at What.cd was hacked and all of the users got a love letter from the ‘RIAA.’ In the haste to get oink replacements out and well populated, there have been some severe security lapses. Almost makes me want to stop the whole torrent thing. Almost. ” B-but we thought OiNK and its descendants were all about the community, and not playing stupid hacker tricks on a gullible userbase! Anyway, the “RIAA” e-mail is after the jump. It’s pretty obviously fake–note the British spelling of “offense,” for one!–but then again, the fact that OiNK’s post-raid homepage seems to seriously be using “Never Forget 10/23″ in its logo should serve as a sign that the irony-o-meters of a lot of people are out of whack.
Dear registered user of the site What.cd,
We have recently been investigating the activities of the users of the site http://www.what.cd/ and we have found that this site exists for the sole purpose of music piracy.
Pirating music is a criminal offence and we believe it should be obvious to you that the results outweigh the benefits – hard working artists won’t be rewarded for their work and will stop producing music,
ultimately leading to a severely reduced selection of music both in the shops and for download.The RIAA had hoped that the disabling by the police of the large illegal music site, Oink.cd, would stop a lot of people from engaging in piracy, as they don’t want to be seen as criminals. However, this appears to not be the case, as two large new sites have sprung up in its place.
This email is the final warning to all of you who were members of Oink.cd and are current members of What.cd. If we find you to be committing any more criminal acts of piracy then we will have to press
charges against you, as representatives of the major record companies of America.Yours Faithfully,
The RIAA
“B-but we thought OiNK and its descendants were all about the community, and not playing stupid hacker tricks on a gullible userbase!”
Whether or not a site is “all about the community” has nothing to do with the willingness of some people to play a little prank on that “community” should they find that a database has been left open to attack.
I get that you find the former-OiNKers insufferable as a group, but come on. You can and have done way, way better than this bit of faux-blubbering.