A major prerelease music Web site was shut down and its alleged o...
A major prerelease music Web site was shut down and its alleged operator arrested in a raid by British and Dutch police, after a two-year investigation by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry and the affiliated British Phonographic…
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Industry organization, the groups said. The members-only OiNK group carried 60 major albums this year before their commercial release, making it the largest source of prerelease music, the trade groups said. The site had about 180,000 members, who had to qualify by proving they had access to prerelease music to upload, and it accepted donations using PayPal. A 24-year-old man from Middlesbrough, U.K. was arrested in connection with the site, and servers in Amsterdam were seized, the IFPI and BPI said. “This was not a case of friends sharing music for pleasure,” said Jeremy Banks, IFPI’s head of Internet antipiracy. BPI CEO Geoff Taylor said the work that went into creating OiNK can’t be replaced by ordinary file-sharers using BitTorrent: “Make no mistake, this operation will cause major disruption to this illegal activity.”