In late October the beloved BitTorrent bazaar formally known as Oink’s Pink Palace was shut down, accused of facilitating the illegal distribution of copyrighted music. British police arrested the site’s creator, 24-year-old Alan Ellis, later releasing him without charge, and in Amsterdam authorities confiscated the servers that hosted the site. I can’t say I grieved—I’d only been a member briefly, acquiring a few albums of major-label hip-hop and out-of-print British glam rock, before I got booted for failing to maintain the ratio of uploads to downloads that the site required. Oink’s forums felt snobby to me, and I wasn’t comfortable contributing to a network where people traded copies of current independent releases.
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My experience with the site wasn’t necessarily the norm, though. Because it was accessible by invitation only and its content was heavily curated by the dyed-in-the-wool music obsessives who made up the bulk of its membership, Oink acquired the aura of a secret society—and plenty of people found the feeling of being in on something irresistible. Other members I knew would get a dreamy, faraway look in their eyes when they talked about Oink, and they were dilettantes like me—the site’s power users traded files by the gigabyte, and after the takedown, in blog posts and comments on tech and music sites around the Web, those guys described Oink in almost religious terms. The consensus among hard-core Oink members seems to be that they’re entitled to skirt copyright law because they’re more than just typical listeners—they’re an elite group of tastemakers who publicize everything they listen to, whether in print, online, or by word of mouth, and as such they’re hardly ripping anybody off when they get hold of music for free.
Oink’s peak population of 180,000 was nothing compared to the millions of shoppers clicking through the iTunes store, but the site had personality to spare. Sure, iTunes has a decent selection and tries really hard to be user friendly, but it still feels like an online Sam’s Club. I visit pretty regularly, but I’ve never once browsed around just to see what’s there—and it’s impossible to see who’s there. Oink, on the other hand, rewarded casual hangouts. Instead of automated suggestions, it had thriving forums full of actual people who seemed physically incapable of restraining themselves from recommending records once they learned what you liked. And whatever they mentioned, it was always available through Oink. As long as you didn’t care whether it was legal, it was yours.
