Comments on: Pearls Before Swine etc.

By: Matt

Matt — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 16:24:00 +0000

http://www.oil21.org/

By: Jordan Harp

Jordan Harp — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 01:20:00 +0000

This sounds like the tortured cries of a wife beater: "I do it because I love you!!"

The irony here is as alarming as a mob lynching.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 13:13:00 +0000

I'm always kind of surprised that people love a particular band or musician yet they steal music from that person.

"I love you so much I have to steal from you!"

This sounds like the tortured cries of a wife beater: "I do it because I love you!!"

You can get tons of free samples online in order to determine if you like the CD enough before you buy it. When I was a kid, we didn't have that luxury. (Now get off of my lawn!) I mean in the past-- before the internet-- I often simply bought an album and assumed the risk that I might not like it. That even happens today. I just view it as part of the risk of buying music.

Many of these musicians want to make a living at what they do, especially the smaller indie rockers. Stealing from them just makes no sense. Zero sense.

By: marathonpacks

marathonpacks — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 21:44:00 +0000

brandon: you’re right, i could have phrased it a bit more specifically, saying “one of the loudest sections of those lamenting the loss of OiNK,” or something like that. i do note that i accidentally incorporated a lot more people into my discussion than i meant to.

also: please never call me Mr. Harvey again.

By: Brandon

Brandon — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 17:21:00 +0000

Also, don’t get me wrong Mr. Harvey. I enjoyed this post immensely, though I disagreed with some of it.

By: Brandon

Brandon — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 17:20:00 +0000

I cannot argue that OiNK wasn’t full of comment threads which if taken as representative could cast the entire community as technocratic fucktards. But the elitism there was not as rampant as this article suggests. What you’re taking as exclusivity (e.g., the invite system) I would describe as some level of regulation on this god-forsaken network of electrified fibers and airspace which is the interweb. I never got a virus from any torrent on OiNK, which is more than I can say for pretty much every other torrent site I’ve used save indietorrents, which is basically OiNK’s little sister. Additionally, I would hesitate to call the rules of sharing on OiNK “lengthy.” The concept was simply “share or leave.” If you did not upload, you were not contributing, and had to go away. None of these guidelines are complicated with a basic working knowledge of p2p torrents. As far as the minimum bitrate goes, this was installed to keep webrips of streaming music out of the community as they are easily accessible to anyone and therefore not worth sharing; understandably, the moderators did not want to waste server space. So there’s the two big complicated OiNK rules. We share and we want CDs.

What I’m mourning from the loss of OiNK is not the elite indie community where I could have flexed my musical e-peen when the mood struck me. I am also not defending that community; it was the creation of a segment of OiNK members and served no useful purpose aside from letting a few audiophiles vent their spleens about pitchfork. What I will miss is the regulation and the functionality which was unprecedented in any torrent site I’ve encountered. OiNK did not start internet sharing, and its demise will not stop internet sharing. It simply provided one of the best means of internet sharing I’ve ever seen. The so-called “parochial” or “privileged” aspects (adjectives, by the way, which don’t really address the fact that I and many others steal music because we’re broke) stemmed from a highly vocal minority which misrepresented OiNK and OiNK users, not unlike this essay.

By: Swankster

Swankster — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 17:00:00 +0000

I’ve never used OiNK, so I can’t comment on the utopian community aspects. However, just because a group of like minded people are friendly and uphold high standards, perhaps even better than legitimate, i.e. legal alternatives, is not a valid justification for pirating music.

I’m tired of hearing this defense.

By: ZooRat

ZooRat — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 14:07:00 +0000

I can understand a lot of the distaste for OiNK in its aftermath, but all your arguments are flawed in a discussion of the OiNK community as a whole. You hinge not on the qualities of its user, but of a generation that is not in the least bit specific to OiNK alone.

You could replace OiNK with almost any other name and this article would still hold up.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 00:18:00 +0000

What’s more important to consider, though, is what gets lost: a whole generation, more or less, is growing up thinking they have a birthright to others’ artistic creations, and is justifying its freeloading by making the logically-flawed arguments that they have no other place to discover music, or they’re sticking it to the industry. These sorts of claims about OiNK represent the subset of its most fervent users--music fans who trick themselves into believing that an imaginatively-constructed, hidden-from-plain-view sharing and barter system could substitute for a sustainable approach to supporting music as art.

real good stuff.

By: Chris Ott

Chris Ott — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 13:37:00 +0000

I wonder when everyone will catch up to me on this topic, so I can rejoin the conversation.