Back in its day, OiNK was probably the most popular private tracker – it had over 180000 active members and had a celebrity status among BitTorrent sites. Sadly, all of this changed when Operation Ark Royal, a coordinated raid by IFPI, BPI and Interpol, shut down the ‘Pink Palace’ tracker and arrested its owner Allan Ellis. However during the legal proceedings it was determined that founder Alan Ellis was not guilty and he walked free. Despite this legal victory, OiNK remained down since 2007 and it was said that the site was never coming back. Now. three years later, a rather peculiar message has appeared on http://oink.me – according to the message the site is set to return on 31st of October. This is currently a hot topic on most BitTorrent forums and everyone is asking the same question – is this for real?
Before you celebrate, there are several things that seem to be wrong with this announcement. First of all, the message has appeared on http://oink.me – although similar to OiNK’s domain, this actually was not the location where the site was last hosted. OiNK’s was earlier accessible via http://oink.me.uk and then the site moved to http://oink.cd citing legal reasons. Both these domains still point to an official statement by Allan Ellis which contradicts what’s being said on http://oink.me:
On 15 January 2010, Alan Ellis was unanimously declared not guilty.
If you would like to get in touch with me, you can do so here: contact@alanellis.co.uk.
The solicitors representing me in the case were Morgan Rose with Alex Stein as the barrister.
I'd like to express my thanks to all those who have been in touch offering their support over the years, and the huge amount of congratulations I've received over the past few days.
There were three main questions arising from the emails:
- Will the site be returning? Absolutely not.
- Will I be available for interview? No, sorry, I would like to get on with my life in peace now.
- Where did I buy my coat? Wait, what!? Well, I'm almost ashamed to say, but it's from New Look, and judging by the fact that when I checked yesterday my local shop had more than 10 of them in stock for £30, it's not very popular!
Finally, a huge thank you to my excellent legal team, without which I wouldn't be here writing this right now.
From what we can gather from the above, the so called return of OiNK does not seem to be official. It doesn’t look like any of the site’s former owners are behind http://oink.me project. Sure, a new BitTorrent tracker could go live on this domain in a couple of weeks, but it’s highly unlikely it’d be the same old community. I could be wrong but for me this looks like another attempt to ride on the popularity of a once great private tracker. It could be a legit site but considering the number of frauds and scams that are around, I’d suggest you proceed with caution on this one.
P.S. – If you want to read more about OiNK, the raid and events following the raid, have a look here - http://oinkmemorial.blogspot.com .
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