Seriously. The Monkey Island reference just made my f'ing life... Too many noobs around here i guess...

twoohfour

What's with the lack of Monkey Island references...

theharlotfelon

This was easily the worst tech related news of the year, bar none. OiNK single-handedly got me back on the music scene, got me interested in it again, I found so many new and old works of art I would never had the luck and pleasure of coming across on my own.

I don't mean to justify what I did on OiNK. It was clearly an "illegal" act under current US laws. With that said, I've easily purchased 20 times as many CDs and other legal music downloads (mostly through iTMS) in the last 3 years I was an OiNK member as the preceding 3 years. I will miss OiNK like I will miss no other single internet entity.

dearhaw

Wrong. OiNK was one of the few elite sites. They held such high standards for their huge amount of content, that no one will ever duplicate what they did.

Over 60 largely awaited advanced releases this year so far? Over 60 albums that were out days before their store date? People aren't duplicating that.

Good luck OiNK, we'll miss you around scenetorrents. Hope all works out for you.

x3r0

one goes down,

a dozen more will go right back up.

Huginn

Wow, just a week ago my account was deleted. I was on vacation for three weeks and if you don't log in for more than 3 weeks, they delete your account. Lucky me I suppose

kadtech

The most annoying thing about this is all the outright lies and falsehoods that are being bandied about by so-called journalists listening to the IFPI goons. It was never a pay-for-access site, it never hosted copyrighted material, just links, and the owners of the site had zero to do with what users shared, pre-release or not.

The IFPI is banging the pre-release drum hard now that they have made that an "extra heinous" crime somehow, but 60 albums... come on. Who cares? The site had, what, thousands of active torrents? The vast majority of that was probably old stuff that simply cannot be had for love or money in any other way. Sure, there may have been some pre-release material floating around, but since pre-release in this case means "nasty, regurgitated covers/remixes of music that was crap when it was first performed, now freshly performed by talentless idiots to boot and then murdered quality-wise in the final mastering stage" since that is what the music companies output these days in the strange belief that will sell, it was hardly a big deal.

It's a tragedy that Oink is gone. Lots of music enthusiasts found a lot of new - and old - music that way, and I'm sure many of those went out and bought albums by those artists as a consequence.

If the labels want to know how to increase sales, the answer is to start taking some risks with the artists they record, not do "Britney Spears Clone 332" singing "Standard Dance Pop Song 132" - and it wouldn't hurt if they stopped mastering the albums with zero freaking dynamic range in an insane quest for higher volumes, either!

cr0ft

Are you all too lazy to get on Bittorrent :-) usually it's only slightly behind OiNK!

Wegmans

You know what's also pretty funny, if you run a google search [www.google.com], google actually removed the cached pages as well.

Joseph

Yes, let's publicly acknowledge our illegal activities.

ninjashock

eek, when should I start taking a hatchet to my PC?

Baaaaaa

make sure to join the official facebook group:

[swau.facebook.com]

Captain Nobody

"60 Pre Release albums?"

Jesus. Wouldn't be easier to put tighter controls on music prior to hitting the distribution channels?

-chet

Fuck. :(

Toastercookie

"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"

What are the odds they'll prosecute users. I never used OiNK but I did use others... :-/

hayabusa55

Fucking assholes.

WillClark

I love my streamripper.

dragonphyre

the only decent place to get teh flac is now in the crapper.

Captain Nobody

OiNK was a great tracker with very strict standards that I used to download high quality rips of music I already had. It was faster to download then it was to rip that quality. But I also used it to preview music before I buy it, I can't stand paying for crap, and lately music seems to be just that. I hope it comes back. Please God of Piracy, return our beloved OiNK to us!

kr5is

Wow.

dead_red_eyes

on to the next site i guess... sucks it got shut down.

leemajors

...this sucks big time! It was up last night....

mmfy

i always wanted an OiNK account, but was never blessed with one, i always assumed it was just a stash of torrent files, which arnt illegal in them selves

thistle.john

Monkey Island, I love that game!!!

wikkit

I just died a little inside.

nullsleep

Monkey Island! I had forgotten! Wow what love. Lucas Arts, Sierra On-Line too. Those were the days...

sartinsauce

@Wegmans: Why do you think it was only slightly behind OiNK? I know for a fact that some of the rips that appeared on OiNK we days later upped onto other trackers. It truly is a loss, here's to hoping that something else will come along with quality content.

It's true that new music is easy to find, but old and obscure stuff was why OiNK was pure gold. They couldn't have waited until after 10/26 though? -sigh- The spotted cat will have to come by some other means...

bobvila

You fight like a dairy farmer!
How appropriate, you fight like a cow!

dwilljo

props on the monkey island ref - i registered just so i could comment on its awesomeness

dwilljo

@kr5is: I used it to preview music as well, and every record I liked I bought. This sucks because you could get basically anything on Oink, including records I could never find in stores. Besides, the people and teh quality were just great.

wheat