They may have felt like they were "piggy-in-the-middle", but six ex-OiNK (Oink's Pink Palace) users have been arrested in the last two weeks by British police on charges related to up-loading pre-release music to the old P2P music site.
British and Dutch police teamed up late last year to shut-down OiNK which at the time was one of the largest sources of illegally-downloaded music and also provided many pre-released songs to other P2P sites on the net. At the time of its closure, the invitation-only site boasted a membership of 180,000 users; not bad for a site named after a snort.
There was a strict policy at OiNK stating that users could not pay for their invitation-only membership but instead kept the trough full through voluntary donations. Members also had to adhere to minimum upload/ download ratios.
Police were prompted to post a message on the closed OiNK site saying that they would seek out users' identities when, despite first impressions, users' email addresses were found not to be encrypted. This discovery I'm sure, would not have left some feeling as happy as a pig in mud. The good news for members though was that the data stored on OiNK's servers was not sufficient enough to incriminate the majority of OiNK users.
This remains cold comfort to the latest group arrested, including five men aged from 19 to 33 and one 28 year old woman, who were taken to their local police station for questioning. All have now been released on bail.