The International Federation Of The Phonographic Industry is being a bit tight lipped on where it will go next in its continuing battle to close down major sources of illegal music content online.
There has been some speculation regarding a notice posted on the former home of controversial BitTorrent community OiNK which, as previously reported, was closed down this week after police seized their servers and arrested the man behind it. The IFPI posting says: "A criminal investigation continues into the identities and activities of the site's users".
That could imply that the IFPI plans to pursue action against those people who used OiNK to access illegal content as well as the people who ran it. File sharers in blog land point out similar things were implied by the Movie Picture Association Of America when they closed down LokiTorrent back in 2005, but that no users of the service were ever targeted. But the IFPI is keen to ensure such file sharers are not too complacent about these things, telling reporters: "We expect [OiNK] users will start to migrate to [other BitTorrent trackers] over the next few days. We are watching their movements. It's a case of watch this space".
Meanwhile, OiNK founder Alan Ellis, the man arrested by police for mass copyright infringement earlier in the week, has denied that the service he ran contravenes copyright laws, comparing the tracking service to search engines like Google. Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, he said: "I haven't done anything wrong. I don't believe my website breaks the law. They [the police] don't understand how it works. The website is very different from how the police are making it out to be. There is no music sold on the site - I am doing nothing wrong. I don't sell music to people, I just direct them to it. If somebody wants to illegally download music they are going to do it whether my site is there or not".
Making the Google comparison, he continued: "If this goes to court it is going to set a huge precedent. It will change the internet as we know it. As far as I am aware no-one in Britain has ever been taken to court for running a website like mine. My site is no different to something like Google. If Google directed someone to a site where they can illegally download music they are doing the same as what I have been accused of. I am not making any OiNK users break the law".
Concluding, he repeated the common argument that file-sharers buy more not less music, despite downloading large amounts of music for free: "People who download music also buy CDs as well. A lot of people download music on the internet to get a taste of it and then later buy the CD".
As previously reported, the music industry are especially anti services like OiNK because of the number of albums that surface on communities like it before they are formally released digitally or otherwise. IFPI chief John Kennedy has admitted that combating pre-release leaks of albums online is a particular priority for the industry body, telling reporters: "The damage being done with prerelease piracy is almost immeasurable. It ruins the launch of a record [and] damages the impact on the market for all records. We have just got to tighten up on leaks".