Although i am sadderned by the demise of OiNK and although i know that writing an article wont bring the site back. I just have to say how disgusted i am by the mainstrem medias handling of this event. Some may call me niave in believing that outfits such of the BBC being out neutral news storys. You see i expect anti piracy organisations to have negative bias towards 'piracy' their press releases with all sorts of truth bending and such, and thats fine thats there job. I also expect sites such as rlslog and torrentfreak to have pro bias towards file sharing. However i expect news corporations to remain neutral and i know, i know nothing can be bias free but the BBC article on the OiNK closure really rilled me up. It is so full of lies and truth bending rubbish, that almost made me punch my Monitor. Lets have a look at what the biggest broadcaster in the world had to say:

 “Members paid ‘donations’ via debit or credit cards, ensuring their continued access to the site.”

What? Where did they get that from? OiNK members never had to pay anything to join, upload, download, use the forums, upgrade their status or anything in fact. Although you could donate to the site, you were not forced to donate only encouraged.

"Users were only invited to join the site if they could prove that they had music to offer, according to an IFPI spokesman"

Wrong again! You did not have to prove that you could offer any uplaods to the site to get invited. You just had to be friends with someone who was already a member. Most oink members never uploaded anything to the site, only seeding what they downlaoded. Simple as that. Trying to make out that the site screened invites for new members who would upload new material is simply wrong.

"This extremely lucrative and creative scheme consisted of a private file-sharing website being set up. Membership was by invitation only."

The only thing that made my blood boil in this quote, is the word "lucrative". Implying that he was somehow making money from the sites donations. This makes me so mad. Although i know many of you think that we at rlslog make buckets of this website this simply isnt true. The servers that rlslog are hosted on cost around $500 a month, a figure that without advertising we would not be able to maintain. The money generated from the ads barely cover this. Now think of OiNK a website that had some 200k+ users and had no ads only donations. Thats all the donations were there for and without it the bills for the server would never have been paid. 

Those are just a few of the quotes that really got to me. Although im sure most are quotes from anti-piracy organisations theres nothing in there from pro file sharing lobbies, nothing to offers another point of few. Although im just concetrating on this article from the BBC i have read others that have the same tone and feel. Overall though these articles paint a picture of a site that made money from pirating music and was very cold. In reality OiNK was a great place not just for the great selction of music just the way consumers want it (hello music industry!) but for the community, the people you met and the friendships that were made. Somewhere where you could talk about yourfavourite music and share that music with others. It was a warm, friendly place to be, something demonstrated by the ' OiNK' himself through his forum posts. You could tell he was genuinely a nice guy who just loved music. If anyone here was a member and actively joined in on the community at OiNK you will know what im talking about.