Today, after almost a year, the OiNK investigation came to an end. Earlier today we reported that OiNK administrator Alan Ellis was charged with “conspiracy to defraud”. Now, just hours later the alleged uploaders are charged with copyright infringement for uploading one CD.

This May, five men and one woman were arrested for sharing music on OiNK. The suspects were taken in for questioning, and required to provide DNA samples and fingerprints.

Two months later, two of the six alleged uploaders were released from further investigation, but (at least) two of the remaining four have been charged today. The alleged uploaders were charged with copyright infringement for uploading one CD. The “conspiracy to defraud” accusations vanished, as they were not mentioned.

The case(s) will be heard in two weeks at a Magistrates Court, after which there is a possibility that it will be passed onto a Crown court. TorrentFreak had the chance to talk to one of the charged uploaders. “I think it’s a sledgehammer to crack a walnut,” he said. The alleged uploader is convinced that he is being used to set an example.

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Noel Gallagher from the 50 million-selling band Oasis has been chatting about piracy on the UK
’s Radio 1. He jokes about mainstream journalists asking him about non-existent leaks from the new album and encourages everyone to download the music of rival bands.

Sooner or later, this type of article will cease to be news. In fact, so many artists are speaking out about file-sharing in a positive or at least pragmatic way that by this time next year, we’ll probably be writing about artists who don’t have something to good to say, such is the shift in attitudes towards P2P.

Big names like Nine Inch Nails, 50 Cent, Joss Stone, Duffy and Travis have all had positive things to say recently.

But before supporting file-sharing becomes mainstream and we don’t have to report it anymore, Noel Gallagher from the 50 million album-selling band Oasis has been chatting with Zane Lowe from the UK’s Radio 1 about many things, including (of course) file-sharing.

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Privacy has always been a major concern for BitTorrent users and there are only a few ways to remain anonymous. By using a secure connection, as the new TorrentPrivacy tool offers, you can bypass almost every firewall or traffic shaping application, while making sure that nobody can see what you’re downloading.

The TorrentPrivacy software has been developed so that anybody can use it, from BitTorrent novices through to experts. TorrentPrivacy uses a pre-configured version of v1.7.7 uTorrent, so there are no settings that have to be entered manually.

It pretty much works straight out of the box. First you have to chose a connection point - at the moment they have servers in Europe, USA, Canada. The closer the connection point is to your true location, the faster the speeds you will get from the service.

Then, after you’ve chosen a connection point, just click connect and the program will connect to the server. The connection is made through the SSH protocol with 128bit encryption, which prevents traffic shaping and keeps your traffic ambiguous to prying eyes.

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A vulnerability described as ‘critical’ has been discovered in versions of uTorrent and the official BitTorrent client. The ‘buffer overflow’ vulnerability can be exploited to compromise a user’s computer for the execution of arbitrary code. It is suggested that users should immediately update to uTorrent version 1.8 RC7 or higher.

Secunia has issued two urgent security alerts, one for uTorrent and the other for the official BitTorrent client. Both clients are being developed by BitTorrent Inc.

The vulnerability was found in uTorrent and can be maliciously exploited to compromise a user’s computer, however, it also affects the official BitTorrent client since it’s based on the uTorrent code.

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Vortex Network, the touted replacement for the BrokenStones tracker, is today surrounded by controversy.

The site owner announced she will link the site to a non-profit organization as part of a wider plan to unite all BitTorrent sites in a new air of legitimacy. Staff and members are leaving the site en masse.

A few weeks ago after difficulties with Malaysian hosting, the much-loved BrokenStones BitTorrent tracker went down.

When news of a replacement site started to filter through, staff, members and others were prepared to offer time and resources to make the site a success. This led to the birth of Vortex Network - a brand new site put together in record time and one of the first to be built on the shiny new ‘Gazelle‘ codebase, developed by What.cd.

Around two weeks ago, a message appeared on the site, written by Rachel Faith Anderson, “Owner, SysOp and Chief Admin of the Vortex Network”.

In it were thanks to the ‘heroes’ who put the site together along with statements about Vortex Network becoming something unique and something different, a standard claim for a new BitTorrent site trying to get off the ground.

“Welcome to the eye of the storm my friend” ends the notice from Rachel, which has turned out to be quite the prophetic greeting.

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The only Democratic FCC Commissioner who came near to approving the proposed merger of XM and Sirius satellite radio changed course today; Jonathan Adelstein now says he will not support the deal.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Federal Communications Commission will soon approve the proposed merger of Sirius and XM satellite radio, but with some punitive strings attached. According to the Journal’s latest post (subscription), Republican Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate, the last holdout on the deal, will soon give the go ahead to the union.

But she wants “a consent decree that resolves several enforcement issues involving the satellite radio companies and a combined fine of about $20 million,” according to the story.

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Some artists, bands and labels claim that their lives are ruined by their material being available on P2P networks.

BuckCherry are complaining that a track from their latest album has leaked to BitTorrent. How do they complain? Via an Atlantic Records press release. I smell a rather large free-publicity rat.

Leaks of pre-release material onto the Internet are pretty normal events these days. Even the mainstream media are happy to cover the big leaks, usually while portraying file-sharers as the son of the devil.

In the past many file-sharing news sites have covered such leaks of movies and music as a matter of course, but as they become more prevalent, less people report on them.

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BitTorrent is without a doubt the best way to share large files, as long as you follow some basic rules, that is. We asked one of the leading BitTorrent client developers for some tips and tricks so you can speed up your BitTorrent downloads.

Since there’s always a lot of debate about what works and what doesn’t, we decided to ask an expert to share his thoughts with us.

Olivier Chalouhi, developer and CTO of Vuze (formerly known as Azureus) was kind enough to give us some of his own tips and tricks.

Since Olivier was the person who initiated the Azureus Open Source project in 2003, which went on to create one of the most popular BitTorrent clients ever, if anyone knows how to get the best out of your torrent client, he does.

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A man allegedly seen ‘camming’ the latest Batman movie has been arrested by police. Following guidelines, theater employees called the police after suspicions were aroused.

According to the MPAA, many other movies have been recorded at this theater.

Hindering piracy of the movie was always high on the list for Warner and it handed out night vision goggles in Australia in an attempt to thwart ‘cammers’ - people who record movies in theaters.

In Australia ‘cammers’ are asked to leave if they are caught by theater staff, in the United States things are a little different.

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Last month, the prominent Malaysian ISP “Shinjiru” had shut down several torrent sites, following pressure from the government.

Strangely enough, after a few days of downtime some of the sites started to reappear, like nothing had happened. However, those sites who did not leave, are now being tapped.

This turned out to be a false sense of security though, as the sysop explained.

“Two days ago we discovered that an external disk was suddenly mounted on our box (in a quite clumsy way, I might add) 24/7 support didn’t know shit about it, until 2 hours ago when a senior admin confirmed that this disk was attached by their legal department and out of their hands.”

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