1. Listen to your entire iTunes library, A to Z. Surely most of the readers of this site have 31 days' worth of music around their house, if not on their hard drives. (OK, a recent cull caused my iTunes timer to drop to 28.2 days, but I have more than enough CDs that I haven't yet imported to make up the gap.)

2. Travel through the David Archuleta corn maze. Sure, he's about as "rock" as the OneRepublic guy, but this maze, located in David's home state of Utah, has an undeniable appeal, thanks to kitsch factor of getting lost in his eyes being way too high. If some metal fan would like to step up to the plate and make, say, a maze out of the Slayer logo, I'll be happy to spend a chilly October night fighting my way through that instead.

3. A weekend getaway to Kate Pierson's motel. The rooms are pretty cheap (the six-person Lazy Lodge, which has its own swimming hole (!), will only set each of your friends back a hundred bucks), the toiletries are collected from Kate's jaunts around the world with the B-52's, and the kitchens have all the cocktail fixings you'll need. And the upstate New York location is especially good for those of us who missed All Tomorrow's Parties a few weeks back, cough cough.

4. Open a pool based around betting on which awful musicians with new albums coming out will warble "The Star-Spangled Banner" and "God Bless America" during the baseball playoffs. A glance at this page of upcoming releases reveals that baseball fans will probably be greeted by the vocal chords of Kenny Chesney^*, Chris Cornell, and the Hinder guy soon, while AC/DC and Oasis are among the "not bloody likely, but wouldn't it be awesome" contenders.

5. Spend all your waking moments obsessing over what music's "October surprise" will be this year. A year ago last night, Radiohead coined the phrase "the Radiohead model" by digitally releasing In Rainbows 10 days after it was done. A few weeks later, OiNK got turned into crispy bacon by the UK authorities. So what's going to happen this year? Will Kanye West, Bruce Springsteen, and the Arcade Fire announce a mini-tour in support of Barack Obama? Will Thom Yorke let the world know that he thinks Sarah Palin is "not all that bad, plus she's got right nice glasses"? Is Apple going to call the major labels' bluff and shut down iTunes? Or none of those things? Let's play futurist!

^* Trust me on this one. He's a lock. I would put down money on it in a heartbeat.

Ellis hasn't been brought up on any copyright-related charges, but the two users (of six who were arrested in May) were each charged because they each uploaded one album. Speculation that those albums were pre-release recordings is rife, although no statement has been issued by British authorities yet. But the news of the charges is, of course, causing the kiddies at TorrentFreak to crap their collective diaper call for "civil disobedience," including "taking hard copies of CDs and dropping them in the streets in random places." Uh... OK.

In news closer to home, one of the admins of EliteTorrents, which was shut down three years ago, was sentenced to 18 months in prison yesterday after being convicted on federal charges of conspiracy and felony copyright infringement. He'll also be on probation for three years and have to pay $20,000.

OiNK Admin Charged With Conspiracy To Defraud [TorrentFreak]
OiNK Uploaders Charged With Copyright Infringement [TorrentFreak]
EliteTorrents Admin Sentenced To 18 Months In Prison [Digital Media Wire]

It seems the music industry's desire to paint OiNK as a criminal network focused on the ruination of the music business, has so far led them to direct the police into arresting users who allegedly pre-released albums, i.e shared albums before their stated retail release date. As mentioned in our previous article, there are no laws in the UK which give extra gravity to pre-release cases, but the music industry seems keen to portray this type of copyright infringement as being much more serious. It has been their theme since the day of the original raid and shutdown of OiNK.

Many observers have been questioning for some time now why the police are involved in this case when it's believed users of the site committed only civilly actionable offenses at best. It's clear that simple copyright infringement isn't what the music industry has in mind.

Those accused were visited by detectives involved with 'Operation Ark Royal', sometimes accompanied by local police. After identification, they were arrested under suspicion of "Conspiracy to Defraud the Music Industry", told that they were not alone and that police would be arresting and interviewing more people in connection with the case. Suspects were then taken to their local police station for questioning and required to provide DNA samples and fingerprinting.

During their interview the suspects were asked all about OiNK, their understanding of the purpose of the site and what they did as a user there. The police were also keen to discover if these alleged pre-releasers personally knew OiNK admin, Alan Ellis, which of course - like the majority of OiNK members - they didn't.

British Police Confirm OiNK Arrests [TorrentFreak; HT The Daily Swarm]
OinK Pre-Releasers Accused Of Conspiracy To Defraud Music Industry [TorrentFreak]
Earlier: All the OiNK coverage from last year]

Discussed: Crummy CD sales possibly (but who knows) related to the rise of illegal downloading; what a torrent is, exactly; the rise and fall of OiNK; the minor fiasco relating to Ba Da Bing records accusing writer Erik Davis of leaking Beirut's Flying Cub Cup; the specious reasoning of full-time pirates; the specious lawsuits launched by the industry; the uncertainty over what leak culture means for the health of indie labels and bands; Radiohead!; the impossibility of stopping any of this.

Not discussed: The increasing trend toward indie bands and labels (anonymously) leaking their own records ahead of time to drum up publicity; larger labels "leaking" material to connected bloggers and key online locations to drum up publicity.

Things I will never understand after reading a million of these articles: the "Robin Hood"/"Johnny Appleseed" theories leakers have about their work bringing the music to teh people. (But let's not get into that again.)

Ripped To Shreds [New York]

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

What.cd

Oh no—it won't be invite-only and super-duper secret! Will the promise of a "new Oink" be sullied by said new site's open gates? Let's ask the denizens of TorrentFreak what they think!

It wont be OiNK. There will just be hoards of transcoded, non-seeded, mislabled, shit uploaded. This is why OiNK existed, as a reliable source of good quality music, which 'BOiNK' won't be.

BOiNK will be nothing like OiNK, except maybe in looks.

OiNK was what it was because it was an invite only site with lots of rules, even though it was fairly easy to get an invite.

high likelyhood of this ex-OiNKer not uploading anything there.

Who? What is the benefit of reporting a transcode? Some other knob is going to come along in 15 seconds and upload it again anyway. You won't be able to stop anyone uploading shit, cos there is no threat of getting banned and the shit-storm will continue. And if it is public that means any form of ratio-type monitoring system is worthless. Therefore there will be just as many seeds as on any other public tracker, which is fuck-all for obscure/little-known music, which is was OiNK thrived in.

Any 'real' Oinker wont use this. Its just going to be Pirate Bay II. Most who care have already joined another private site. If anything this tarnishes OiNKs name.

As much as I loved it, you have to accept OiNK is dead. Get over it everyone. Go somewhere else for your music. We didn't try and resurrect Lennon did we?

And that's only from the first 20 comments! God, I love the Internet.

The Pirate Bay To Bring Back OiNK [TorrentFreak]

What scares me the most about all this is the loss of a revolutionary feeling. Why are all these people, most of them young people, on the side of the government? Do you know what the government does? Are you familiar with the 60s?

Before civil rights, were these the same people who were like, "Well it's the law, so let's go lynch some peeps." (Note: yes, lynching was the law in the South. It was the law.)

I mean, seriously, do you have any ability to think for yourselves?

And that's why we're officially checking out of this "conversation." When you have people comparing the theft of albums to the revolutionary politics of the 1960s... well, thank goodness Rosa Parks and the family of Medgar Evers can take some solace in the fact that you're keeping the struggle going by stealing that Deerhoof record. Forget even falling into the crater-sized holes in the recycled "b-b-but we're turning people onto new music!" argument, let alone the ongoing fallacy that a vote against OiNK is a vote for the RIAA. How can you honestly, earnestly compare Matthew Perpetua's thoughts on OiNK to the mindset of a lynch mob^* and expect anyone to take you seriously? How can you just not realize how monstrously offensive and misguided it is if nothing else?

Some Obnoxious Title I'm Not Going To Bother Typing Out [This Recording]

^* Full disclosure: they took a few shots at us as well, though I'm not sure they think we're as bad as the KKK.

"As far as I am aware no-one in Britain has ever been taken to court for running a website like mine. My site is no different to something like Google.

"If Google directed someone to a site they can illegally download music they are doing the same as what I have been accused of. I am not making any Oink users break the law. People don't pay to use the site."

You sure? 'Cause I bet what a lot of smart people—like the lawyers we talked to earlier in the week and prosecutors and judges and blog readers—really hear when they hear that is:

"If Google directedcreated a Google-approved space in which someone to a site theycan illegally download music they are doing the same as what I have been accused of. I am not making any Oink users break the law, I am merely helping to facilitate their breaking of the law, which is in itself a crime, as well as using their donation money to maintain the equipment used to help them break the law, and so ditto to my last comment. People don't pay to use the site, but even discounting the donations, they are recieving goods/services (new copyrighted material) in exchange for pirating copyrighted material (comitting a criminal act)."

Yeah, that's better. Even if it sounds more like copping a plea than a defense. And sounds a lot like what we hear every time someone gets busted for piracy. (And yeah, yeah, how dare we defame the beloved clown prince of OiNK with these slanderous mischaracterizations.)

OiNK Founder: We're Just Like Google [Daily Telegraph]

By this point, we've seen the gamut of responses to OiNK's demise, and though there were a few thoughtful and well-reasoned responses (DJ Rupture's, for example), the majority of the responses seem to be rote parroting of old standbys ("LABELS ARE GREEDY AND EVIL!" "ARTISTS SHOULDN'T EXPECT TO BE PAID!").

I don't want to try to argue against those old tropes, as much as I love banging my head against an immovable brick wall; I just want to point out another facet of this whole "OiNK Shutdown" situation. I concede that while file-sharing has (obviously!) contributed to the music industry's woes in the past 10 years, we shouldn't underestimate the toll that's been taken by the fragmentation of consumers' time and money. It's a very bad assumption, in my opinion, to think that the shutdown of OiNK (or even the complete dismantling of file-trading) can/will work as a panacea for the industry's current woes.

I don't believe that 2000 downloads of an album on Oink equates to 2000 lost sales of an album—it simply equates to 2000 people hearing the album that otherwise wouldn't have done. (I'm generalizing, but you get my point.) Now that OiNK is gone, most of those kids are not suddenly going to go out and drop $15 for that new John Vanderslice CD because now that's the only way they can get it—they're just going to go without it. And that doesn't seem like it benefits anyone.

I mean, which is better? Selling 1000 CDs and having 1000 people hear your music, or selling 1000 CDs, but having 3000 people hear your music? To the accountant, it doesn't matter; the bottom line remains "1000 CDs sold." But what about to the artist, or, for that matter, to anyone who has an interest in that artist's career in the long term (manager, label, booking agent... the list goes on)? I'm not saying that OiNK, or other free P2P, is the way to do things—hell, I don't know what the answer actually is. But what I do know is that if the industry actually thinks that banishment of P2P will suddenly rid them of all their problems, and that suddenly, the sales figures will just go back to the "pre-P2P '90s glory days," I think they're in for a rude awakening.

Sales aren't bad because kids are "getting for free" something that they would otherwise be paying for. Sales are bad because "free" is the only way many kids are willing to get it anymore.The people who are going to pay for the music are the ones who are already paying for it; they're the people who show up in those sales charts every week. Don't expect that the membership of OiNK is now suddenly going to start showing up in those numbers, because it's not going to happen. The problem isn't just access to product, it's interest in product.

It's been said many, many times, and it sounds very simple, but the fact is there are just a lot more things for people to invest their time in these days. I recognize, of course, that money is a hugely important factor in this discussion, but maybe there's something that's even more valuable than money these days, and that's being able to keep and hold peoples' attention, getting them to invest some of their limited time in your art/artist/release/etc. That way, at least you've still got them interested in the music, on the whole, and ideally, maybe some kind of financial compensation will shake out of that somehow, somewhere, down the line.

The saddest part? I fear that the aggressive dismantling of these P2P communities will ultimately just have the effect of making the kids become even less interested in music, and they'll just devote more of their time to other stuff—games, YouTube, whatever the hell it is they do with their cellphones all day long.

Sure, my banishment meant that I'd have to wait an hour or two before finding out that the new Bjork record had leaked. But the smug, cute-avatar-laden attitude of the site's denizens—not to mention the fact that the site's catalog was only "everything you'd ever want" if you were a twentysomething white dude whose music taste began at "indie" and ended at "rock"—irritated the crap out of me. And judging by the "Good riddance"-filled IMs and e-mails that I've been receiving over the past 24 hours, I wasn't alone.

In fact, when I got booted, I was only worried about one thing: Whether or not my friend who'd invited me to the site a few years ago would get kicked as well; it didn't seem fair that he'd have to pay for my online tomfoolery of 2007 because of a decision he made in 2005. But everything else—the music, the insufferable indieosity, the arguments about bitrate—was pretty much replaceable elsewhere on the Internet, albeit in forms that one might have to pay for once in a while (note: for those of you who start a hue and cry about the out-of-print rarities offered by the site, I would like to introduce you to the world of .rar blogs and GEMM) and not in a self-satisfied pastel wrapper.

Anyway, I'm curious: How did you feel about OiNK? Because I suspect that the prevailing attitude toward it around these parts isn't as mournful as the collective freak-out we've been witnessing over the past 30 hours might indicate.

Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.

[Image via Oink Memorial]

The Sensible

• "Oink didn't offer solutions; it highlighted the problems of over-priced, over-controlled music elsewhere. Oink was an online paradise for music fans. The only people who could truly be mad at it were the ones directly profiting from the sale of digital or physical music. (Like myself! F%5k!)" [Mudd Up!]

The Slightly More Dramatic

• "I have very firm stand about the insistence of the music industry to desperately implement copyright issues in a world that has already changed. The music industry should change its old, and obviously outdated practice and begin to change with the times. Oink, you will be forever remembered." [Have Laptop Will Travel]

The Oh-Come-On-Already

• "Don't get me wrong for the title of this post, I don't think that OiNK's administrator is a pirate, but I definitely believe that the IFPI is worse than those bastards that charge for the distribution of copyrighted material. They've managed to hijack OiNK's website, to put on their propaganda, and all of this without ANY real legal base. Is this an ethic behavior?" [Leo Lambertini from a post entitled "IFPI Is Worse Than Pirates" and just slightly worse than copyright holders apparenty]

• "I woke up to find some very bad news today. Oink.cd, arguably one of the most loved and most comprehensive music tracker on earth was shut down by the Establishment just a few hours ago. October 23, 2007 will now live in infamy as the day when the haven for people who actually have good music tastes was effectively closed. This leaves thousands of music aficionados homeless." [Indie Music Chatter]

• "1. A cute avatar is a must. In the spirit of the old site, It'd be really sweet if everyone could keep the cute avatars up." [OiNK's Pink Palace Memorial Forum where you must now sadly register to get to the really weepy posts]

• "I will miss OiNK a lot and i wish 'OiNK' (the person) whatever his real name is the the best of luck in defending himself against the bunch of lies they will change him with!
"First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win" Mahatma Gandhi [Releaselog]

(It's the Gandhi quote that really puts it over the top.)

Especially those of you who may have paid a donation to steal. Forget prosecution, you should be lucky you're not being tarred and feathered or thrown in the stockade for being that stupid. And hey, you can calm down because your ringleader has been released from jail, even though his dumb ass is probably going back there for a long time. (Also hilarious: "It is highly doubtful that the IFPI or BPI will go after [all OiNK users], or even one of them." Sleep with one eye open, chumps.) The gross entitlement and embarassing lack of perspective displayed in the OiNK "fallout" makes me long for a tactical Iranian nuclear strike or a killer comet more than ever.

^* From that in-defense of OiNK rant, regarding how "the new model" should make money: "Touring and merch trumps album sales." It does, huh? Tell that to your writer who wouldn't shell out eight measly bucks for a show by one of his "favorite" artists. Surely your proclamation will inspire him to actually pay for a concert by a band he likes, instead of sucking up via blog for a guest-list spot.

First, I chatted with an American intellectual property litigator who asked to remain anonymous, and asked him basically the same question posed by Pytlik:

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 leading case involved The Nation beating Harper & Row to press by publishing merely "between 300 and 400 words" of President's Ford's memoirs; the Supreme Court held that "The Nation effectively arrogated to itself the right of first publication, an important marketable subsidiary right." Harper & Row Pubs., Inc. v. Nation Enters., 471 U.S. 539, 548-49 (1985). "First publication is inherently different from other [exclusive copyright] rights in that only one person can be the first publisher;... the commercial value of the right lies primarily in exclusivity. Because the potential damage to the author from judicially enforced 'sharing' of the first publication right ... is substantial, the balance of equities in evaluating such a claim of fair use inevitably shifts." Id. at 553.

That fact also makes it criminal infringement, because it is "the distribution of a work being prepared for commercial distribution, by making it available on a computer network accessible to members of the public, if such person knew or should have known that the work was intended for commercial distribution." 17 U.S.C. § 506(a)(1)(C). (A "'work being prepared for commercial distribution' means ... a musical work ... or a sound recording, if, at the time of unauthorized distribution (i) the copyright owner has a reasonable expectation of commercial distribution; and (ii) the copies or phonorecords of the work have not been commercially distributed." 17 U.S.C. § 506(a)(3)(A).) Of course, it's also criminal because "the infringement was committed ... for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain." 17 U.S.C. § 506(a)(1)(A).

Prison terms for this stuff run up to 3-5 years for first offenses, 10 years for repeats. 18 U.S.C. § 2319(a), (c).

Yipes! As a follow-up, I asked two questions: Whether or not it was likely for prosecution to occur in the US, and whether or not the idea that any money that changed hands was donated—as opposed to the fees being a membership requirement—made a difference as far as "commercial distribution" goes:

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.

Ah, those ratio requirements—they'll always get you.

Later, I had a quick IM exchange on the subject with MCBarrister, a Washington-based attorney with a background in IP and Internet law:

mauraidolator: So basically I am curious as to whether or not you think it's likely that authorities in the US will try to go after American users of OiNK; there's a threatening message on the front page of the site right now, and the freaking-out has commenced, as you might imagine.
MCBarrister: I think it depends on how quickly the RIAA gets its hands on any of the server logs. That's partly facetious, but I don't see the U.S. Department of Justice using its resources right now for criminal investigations of copyright infringement. The overseas raids were criminal matters—I don't expect the same here. Plus, there's an interesting issue of whether the UK and Dutch authorities would share the information with a private party. There are long-running debates over data treatment and security between the US and EU.
But if RIAA does get the logs and data, then there will be hell to pay for anyone who used credit cards [to donate]; those who maintained membership via upload will be a little harder to trace because you'd have to follow the IP addresses, and ISPs are not always willing to hand over their customers without court orders
mauraidolator: i'm pretty sure that the donations were done via PayPal.
MCBarrister: Hrmmm. PayPal is owned by eBay, which has pretty liberal policies about helping IP rights owners. I think it would still take a court order, but PayPal / eBay would be more likely to hand over personally identifying information that universities have proven more unwilling to give.
mauraidolator: What is interesting to me is the rough estimates of where the users came from — I've read that the US-based membership of the site was as high as 50%, even though the site was located in the UK.
MCBarrister: It's not that surprising, depending on the content. I graduated from college before there was a graphical Internet, so I never really participated in these activities—but I have a rough sense that lots of US-based university students were playing since they have access to the best net connections around. My cable modem would choke on the kind of uploading necessary to support what I would want back down, assuming I had anything that was of value to the network in my vinyl rips.
mauraidolator: same here
MCBarrister: My bottom line—there should be some level of fear, but the action is going to be from the RIAA (again), not the feds, unless a new US Attorney General (once confirmed) has a real passion for prosecuting IP violations.
mauraidolator: Has there been any word on his attitude towards IP violations yet?
MCBarrister: I haven't noticed—the mainstream coverage has focused on his willingness to back the administration's claims of independence from the rule of law when it affects them personally, and a short time searching on Google turns up nothing more relevant.

So, there you have it. And if the new US Attorney General is excited by the idea of going after illegal downloaders? Well, look on the bright side, ex-OiNKers: There could always be another terrorist attack! That would certainly tie him up for a while.

The OiNK.CD Memorial Museum And News looks to already be your one-stop for OiNK-related LOLz, with YTMND links, pics, video, and an interview with a young man spearheading an OiNK suicide pact:

OiNK News: What kind of music did you download on OiNK that you can't find anywhere else.
FrmrOiNKr: To be honest I'm not sure. i don't really like music anyway. I just liked being to brag about my high ratio. But I did like that song from that 4 year old french kid Jordy.

On the other hand, there's the OiNK's Pink Palace Memorial Forum, which seems to be a legit place for former OiNK users to cry, and they're planning a special tribute tonight:

At Midnight EST tonght, take your beverage of choice, raise it up in the air, say "OiNK" and drink.

I'll go you one better, kids. I'm raising a beer to OiNK right now, because this bust has provided me with more amusement in eight hours than anything else has this month. Including the In Rainbows hype!

OiNK.CD Memorial Museum And News [Hilarious Official Site]
OiNK's Pink Palace Memorial Forum [Depressingly Hilarious Official Site]

OiNK Website Shutdown [YouTube via The Daily Swarm]

• "Sorry if this has already been posted, but I'm following the San Diego fires right now, and this is just another devastation right on top of it." [Oh No They Didn't]
• "Now that OiNK is gone, where shall we get our pre-release fix? Where can we so easily unearth new bands to hype?" [I Guess I'm Floating]

• "In fact, as we often mentioned, if you were an international law enforcement agency or a record company spook seeking to create the world's greatest filesharing entrapment scheme, you probably couldn't have done much better than Oink. Let the conspiracy theories begin." [On The Download]
• "Now, 180,000 users won't be able to spread those great new bands to their friends, and people will stop buying CDs and the record industry will die just like it was going to all along. Thanks a lot, you fucking pigs." [Sam @ BrooklynVegan]

Thankfully, there are some people out there who are optimistic:

• "Can't be long before the code for running your own OiNK pops up somewhere, right? We can have an informal meetup/support group somewhere. Just pick a bar in the comments and we'll plan." [Stereogum]
• "RIP until the next one comes around. There will always be another one." [MetaFilter]

Surely this is going to get even more entertaining as the day goes on, right? I might have to do another post on this later, although it'll be hard to beat that San Diego fire comment.

The raids, in Amsterdam and Middlesbrough, followed a two-year investigation into a members-only Web site, www.OiNK.cd, which allowed users to upload and download albums before their release.

An estimated 180,000 members of the site paid "donations" via debit or credit cards, ensuring that they could continue to access the site and its catalogue of music and other media.

The site provided access to more than 60 albums before their release this year, according to industry experts.

Wow, 180,000 members on lists probably now in the hands of the authorities during the international music industry's most litigious season in recent memory. Whoops! (Actually many of the news stories on OiNK's shutdown are getting the facts wrong—users didn't have to pay dues to remain an OiNK user; they just had to upload a shit-ton of music, so as to keep their upload-to-download ratio high enough.) Here's hoping that whatever user logs the cops have don't include any of the entitled boys and girls on this Digg thread:

This has to be a fucking joke.
I need my OiNK.

There, there...we all survived Audiogalaxy leaving us, and we'll all survive this. Promise.

Raids Target Music Piracy Site [Reuters]

A good chunk of the e-mails are banal in the way that only interoffice correspondence can be, but there are some interesting tidbits buried within, first and foremost among them being the fact that MediaDefender's operatives have infiltrated pretty much every filesharing service/torrent site/leak bulletin board out there—including those whose users are pretty convinced that they're operating "in secret," like OiNK and Soulseek. (Better change your usernames!) And the albums listed in the long rundown of e-mails reads like a rundown of the past few months' highest-priority releases: Ne-Yo, Feist, Brad Paisley. .And Nine Inch Nails, which is surely thrilling Trent Reznor.

Mediadefender's response to Kanye West's Graduation leak seems to encapsulate the company's SOP: Members of the company's "leak team" have every Rapidshare-linking, torrent-seeding site in their bookmarks, and when an album (or a song that's been designated by the labels the company works with as a single) gets out there, they notify the label; then MD operatives start flooding sites with decoy copies. As this e-mail describes those decoys, "The file is real for 45 seconds, then goes to crap and sounds skippy, glitchy, etc." While the company's attempts to upload those bad files have been pretty much unsuccessful on more boutique sites—there's even a chain from a SonyBMG employee berating them for not getting their shit together as far as faking out SoulSeek users—the glitchy files have, apparently, been "flooding" sites like eMule and Gnutella. (Do people still use those sites? Maybe that's the reason for the flood. Just saying.)

Whether or not these tactics work is up in the air; after all, with so much music that sounds like absolute garbage these days, a song that sounds "glitchy" may not cause devoted BitTerrorists to run for the hills (or their local Best Buy) the way that the labels are hoping, and it seems that quite a few admins of file-sharing sites have recognized MediaDefender's IP addresses and kicked the spoof torrents off their servers. But the majors must feel really good that they're throwing a lot of money on at least trying to solve the piracy issue, instead of doing something silly like working out a longer-term solution that doesn't involve basically deceiving people who are interested in their product, if not interested in the price point being offered. (They're hardly the only short-sighted companies out there, either, it should be said.)

Fw: Multi-Track Leak: Kanye West - Graduation [mediadefender-defenders.com]
Days Of The Leak [Spin]

Earlier: The OiNK Top 10: What The BitTerrorists Are Sharing This Week

OiNK