The world’s biggest source of illegal pre-release chart albums is no longer in business as investigators arrest a 24-year-old pirate music site operator in an operation coordinated between Middlesbrough and Amsterdam.

The raids, which were coordinated by Interpol, follow a two-year investigation by the international and UK music industry bodies, International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and British Phonographic Industry (BPI), into the members-only online pirate pre-release club known as OiNK.

OiNK, a site with an estimated membership of 180,000, specialized in distributing albums leaked on to the internet, often weeks ahead of their official release date. Just this year, more than 60 major album releases have already been leaked on OiNK, making it the primary source worldwide for illegal pre-release music. And many hardcore file sharers are lapping it up, obtaining copyrighted recordings and making them available on the internet.

OiNK, the best-known site for pre-release piracy, used peer-to-peer technology called BitTorrent, the most popular software for internet file sharing, to distribute music. As a torrent site, OiNK acted as a library for torrent files.

Investigators allege that the site was operated by a 24-year-old man arrested in the Middlesbrough area. They also seized the site’s servers, based in Amsterdam, in a series of raids. OiNK’s operator allegedly made money by setting up a donations account on the site facilitated by PayPal.

Cleveland Police and the FIOD-ECD SCHIPOL branch of the Dutch police undertook the raids, supported by Interpol, as part of a carefully-planned international investigation with anti-piracy investigators from IFPI and BPI.

Just how damaging is pre-release piracy? Recorded music sales fell by more than a third internationally in the last six years, and independent studies show that a major factor in this decline has been internet users accessing peer-to-peer networks to steal music online.

Pre-release piracy is particularly damaging to sales as it leads to early mixes and unfinished versions of artists’ recordings circulating on the internet months ahead of the release. Closed internet communities known as “ripping groups” often get demos, early mixes of commercial releases and promotional copies of pre-release albums in advance of release so they can distribute the music as widely and as far ahead of release as possible. Each ripping group gains cachet amongst its peers for being the first to get new music and uses torrent sites to distribute the music as widely as possible.

How did OiNK fit into this scheme? The site operated on an “exclusive” basis in which users were only invited to join the site if they could prove that they had music to offer. They were encouraged to distribute recordings in the torrent file format with other OiNK members, and have to keep posting such music to the site to maintain their membership.

Once an album had been posted on the OiNK website, the users who downloaded that music then pass the content to other websites, forums and blogs, where multiple copies were made. Within a few hours of a popular pre-release track being posted on the OiNK site, hundreds of copies can be found further down the illegal online supply chain.

An important victory in the industry’s bid to tackle copyright theft. Jeremy Banks, head of the IFPI’s Internet Anti-Piracy Unit, said: “OiNK was central to the illegal distribution of pre-release music online. This was not a case of friends sharing music for pleasure. This was a worldwide network that got hold of music they did not own the rights to and posted it online.

This operation was a classic example of how the recording industry can work with law enforcement agencies to prove that illegal operations on the internet are not immune from detection.”

BPI Chief Executive Geoff Taylor said: “BitTorrent has fast become the most popular file sharing client, and while the technology is now commonplace, closed criminal networks such as OiNK take time to develop; make no mistake, this operation will cause major disruption to this illegal activity. The government is now well aware of the scale of damage this theft causes to music – copyright theft starves the creative industries of income, which both threatens future investment in artists and vandalizes our culture. That this individual now faces criminal charges will deter some but no doubt others will be looking move into this territory, and the authorities must keep up the pressure to deter the digital freeloaders.”

The search in Amsterdam was conducted under the supervision of the District Attorney Ms. A. Drogt from the Functioneel Parket in Amsterdam. This department specializes in intellectual property crimes.