Oink arrests, ACTA and beyond…

Nice title huh? Took our puny brains the better of a beer to come up with that!

OK, funs and funnies over… time to get serious as we are going to be talking about quite a few poor souls whose lives may be changed forever because of the content goons like the IFPI/BPI etc. As most of you might already know the UK police have made (as of this counting) half a dozen arrests on charges of “Conspiracy To Defraud the Music Industry” (and by the way, you’re not the first one to go: WTF? Is there actually such a law???) . While we are still in wonder and look on in amazement why the police are handling this case as copyright infringement is a civil matter in the UK and not a criminal one, we did come up with theory though.. and publish an article about it, its developed quite a bit more since we last had a peek into it… and into a much more sinister beast.

After getting the admin of Oink and shutting down the site… the anti-piracy organizations realized that they had nothing much on anyone, the site was not making the hundreds of thousands of pounds that they lied/guessed and said it was, and although they hailed it as a huge victory by shutting down the site.., the lag left by the closure of Oink was quickly picked up by other sites… in the end, it seemed like it was a hollow victory, if a victory at all. It’s anyone’s guess when they realized they still had a fat pigeon (Oink’s admin) to roast and who they had the potential to cure one of the biggest thorns in their sides… get the people who upped pre-release albums and plug the sources, something they have had very little success in doing as it seems a few souls within the music industry itself have gotten sick of the greed, scum, cartels and injustices that the music industry are dishing out to the very consumers who they used on their way up and are thus fighting back in their own way by leaking pre-release music, hitting them where it hurts most.

They still had a chance of making the Oink raid fiasco into pure gold by:

• Getting the police involved
• Criminalizing file sharing in the eyes of the common people
• Intimidating people even more (i.e “You can click but your cant hide”)
• Spreading their spin via their media channels
• Bringing their “plight” before the eyes of the common folk via their afore mentioned channels
• Sh@gging sheep (ok, this part is unconfirmed but rumor has it… or it’s something we made up , very plausable though…dont you agree?)

And most important: Strengthens their case for ACTA (keep reading below for ACTA) which is their biggest objective right now. Why? Because they realized suing individuals has gotten them nothing except a PR nightmare. It’s hard to comprehend what _exactly_ they expected to get out of it when they were going to be ruining (and continue to ruin) lives all the way from children and grandparents to homeless (and dead people?), realizing that was getting them nowhere fast they changed their strategy and started going after ISPs… even though by law ISPs were not doing anything wrong a fact that has never stopped the industry from making unlawful moves themselves and throwing false allegations or threatening people, case and point… when the ISP move failed (for the most), bit torrent sites were in their crosshairs and before you can say “thepiratebay” backwards a plethora of torrent sites were sued/bullied even though to this day torrent sites host no copyrighted files but just meta files which are a 100% legal in most countries, two quick examples: Sweden and Canada

Using the politicians, police and other people in power that they bought they brought legal cases against ThePirateBay (in Sweden) and kicked out a host of other sites (in Canada)
But still most of the time they couldn’t get past that little hurdle that didn’t work totally in their favor…. and by "hurdle" we mean: the law, so they needed something that could get them over the law…, and quickly, because even though their pals were _making_ the law, it was taking far too much time in their evil minds; something had to be done and fast.

Come in ACTA, a concept treaty that would strip away many of the “headaches” that they experience when going after anybody or thing that they want. ACTA would effectively strip away many of current laws and give the industry the freedom to do as they please…when they please, how they please and put in the laws that they want, NOW ….and most important without restrictions with regards to international boundaries.

In one swift swoop they would:

• Make sites like ThePirateBay illegal
• Sneak tough versions or bits and pieces of the U.S DMCA into international law as quick as possible
• Bring the police into something that has always been a civil matter (and in the US the feds)
• Stop that "little" problem of sites becoming more popular when word gets out they tried to bring it down (ThePirateBay had 2.5 mil peers before the raid… 12mil now!)
• Get disclosure information of “infringers” in an easier way and cheaper way than current law (and get past current privacy laws in the process) especially in Europe where judges have repeatedly and rightly ruled that file sharing is too petty a crime for “rights enforcers” to get disclosure of the infringers private details on request (which is the reason why Europeans are not getting shafted by scum like the RIAA here… ‘case you were wondering)

We know this is wrong, they know this is wrong… everyone knows it is wrong (not that something as small as right and wrong has stopped them before), why else would they have such secrecy while they brewed this? Why is this still being pushed behind closed doors? Other than the leaked documents few people have the whole picture… again: why?

As usual Michael Geist has some excellent posts on ACTA and questions/advise for the Canadian government which can (and should) be used by other governments as well.

This ends our current discussion on Oink and ACTA… next post: and beyond.

Stay tuned…..

Tags: ACTA, BPI, corruption, erasure of laws, force dmca, IFPI, MAFIAA, OINK, RIAA