Middlesbrough, England is a small city that resides in a borough of the same name in northeast England. The borough, with a total population of just fewer than 135,000, ranks as the 131st most populous government district in England, and its entire metropolitan area ranks 35th, just after Oxford. Leaving Middlesbrough heading north, one passes through less than a handful of small towns before reaching the Newcastle area, and further on the Scottish abyss. Heading due south yields nothing but farms and national forests. The two most prevalent facts about Middlesbrough that turn up upon a quick search are that it’s the first town in the world to be established as the result of a railway, and that British TV station Channel 4 conducted a poll that found Middlesbrough the “worst place to live in 2007.” Other than its latest distinction, that is…

On the dreary northern English morning of October 23, 2007, police raided the Middlesbrough home of Alan Ellis. The 24-year-old Ellis was the creator of the BitTorrent site OiNK’s Pink Palace, usually referred to as simply, OiNK. OiNK was a private BitTorrent Tracker site devoted exclusively to music file sharing. In short, BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file sharing technology that is based around a server hosting a torrent file. The torrent file is uploaded to a hosting server by a member and explains where the initial uploader’s computer is located and where the file referenced by the torrent file is contained. From there, users can download the file from the initial uploader’s computer. After downloading a part of the intended file, a downloader begins to upload the parts of the file he has already received to newly connected users, thus increasing the efficiency at which the files can be downloaded, all without hosting the file on a centralized server.

The technology was developed by Bram Cohen and is marketed by his company BitTorrent Inc., as a method for content owners to distribute content while not incurring the cost of hardware and bandwidth by solely hosting the content themselves for downloads. Mostly, however, the technology is used for peer-to-peer file sharing, many of those files being copied music—which we have all been informed is quite illegal and a mortal sin. BitTorrent sites are used as trackers; trackers host the torrent file and keep track of clients who are downloading and uploading the torrent. Most of these sites are public, meaning that anyone can access, search, and download torrent files from them.

OiNK was unique. It was for music only. It was not public. In fact, you had to be invited to the site by an existing member, who then assumed responsibility for your behavior on the site. If your friend broke the rules, you too could be banished along with them. OiNK required users to keep a certain ratio of uploads to downloads in order to remain a member, meaning you had to share. Strangest of all, the site required the use of a “cute” avatar. It had a small but extremely loyal user base of about 180,000 members, though only about 80,000 were active at any given time. It managed to stay under the radar, defeating many attempts to create a Wikipedia entry about the site.

OiNK was notorious among rapid music fans, musicians, and industry jerk-offs alike, especially for its knack of turning up albums before their official release—allegedly 60 of them this year alone. Still, this fact, like so many others surrounding the OiNK bust, has been somewhat misstated. The police and the mainstream media have released a slew of exaggerated or outright false information about OiNK, all apparently taken from press releases from the two private record industry trade associations who did initiate the investigation into the site, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry and the British Phonographic Industry.

I don’t condone downloading music illegally, and I don’t do it myself. It’s illegal—enough said. However, there are those who say the record labels should have licensed the right to download from peer-to-peer networks a long time ago. There are others who feel music should be freely available, including many artists. There are some, backed by a few studies, who argue downloading actually stimulates sales and those who download are the ones most likely to purchase a CD. And there are some who say the popularity of the sharing of music on peer-to-peer networks is the direct result of record labels being too slow to offer downloads, at too low a quality, and at too high a price. Facts alluded to in statistics released by IFPI themselves:

“More than half of those who have begun downloading in the last six months (56%) are using legal services compared to only 41% of those who have been downloading for more than a year (TNS, March 2006).”

“In the UK, 11% of downloaders switched from p2p to legal services in 2005 (TNS, March 2006), while in France the percentage of users taking advantage of only legal services rose from 23% to 36% of downloaders in 2005.”

There has been a lot of debate about which model the recording industry should adopt for the future distribution of its music. The recording industry has been rather unwilling to participate in the conversation. Instead, they prefer to vilify the consumer, who is left to create their own solutions to what they see as a very real problem. While going around the industry in a way that is prohibited by law is not the solution, fanning the flames with dishonesty hardly helps the industry’s position. In OiNK’s case, the two aforementioned trade associations claimed that the site made “hundreds of thousands of pounds” from donations, required users to provide new content in order to join, and that the sight was based around pre-release material—all claims repeated by the Police, the BBC, and the Telegraph. All, also, which happen to be untrue.

I never used OiNK, but I knew of it. The best commentary I found on the whole situation was from Brooklyn-based DJ, Jace Clayton, who searched OiNK under his moniker, DJ Rupture. He went to the site, “and found every release I’d ever done, from an obscure 7″ on a Swedish label to 320kpbs rips of my first 12″, self-released back in 1999. It was shocking. And reassuring. The big labels want music to equal money, but as much as anything else, music is memory, as priceless and worthless as memory.” He went on, “The way I see it this can only be a good thing for music fans. And what musician is not first a music fan?”

Unfortunately, the industry itself has been rather stubborn, refusing to acquiesce to any of the demands of the consumer.

Watch: “The OiNK Song” [at youtube.com]

Watch: OiNK Protest Song [at vimeo.com]