A good deed never goes unpunished. Over at CrunchGear yesterday, Nicholas broke the story of the WWDC beta of Mac OS X Leopard’s leak onto the Oink BitTorrent Web site. (Oink is a so-called “secret” or “private” BitTorrent tracker that specializes in music, though it also has a fairly vibrant Mac software user base.) We did so because of the particulars involved. No, that a copy of Leopard finds its way onto the Internet isn’t news per se; that happens with every developer build. But the WWDC beta—build number 9A466—is a near-final version of the upcoming operating system and rumors had suggested that Apple had taken great care in making sure that the build would never be leaked. So when it did leak yesterday morning, we considered it newsworthy.
Apparently, several Oink users didn’t agree.
Within minutes of posting the story, several people, presumably Oink users, had flooded the post with genuinely vile statements. I don’t know how his reporting on the illegal leak of a piece of software gives them the right wish awful, terrible things upon Nicholas’ family members, his mother especially, but that’s their prerogative. It’s important to note that also within minutes of our reporting on the story the Torrent file in question was removed by an Oink admin, only to be re-uploaded soon after.
The Leopard beta has since spread across the Internet and is now available on more public BitTorrent trackers like The Pirate Bay. It’s also in the process of being uploaded onto Usenet. So any effort on Apple’s part to stop the bleeding, so to speak, has just become harder.
For most of the day today the Oink Web site has been down. Whether or not Leopard’s leak (or even our reporting) has anything to do with this I don’t know. We contacted Apple yesterday regarding the leak and didn’t receive a reply, but it’d be naive of me to believe that Apple and other parties aren’t currently monitoring these so-called “private” BitTorrent trackers for such activity.
How Apple chooses to respond to Leopard’s leak remains to be seen.
Cool, a reason to try to get my iMac working again.
I have to say, never be surprised by the angry reaction of Mac users, and don’t take it personally either. It’s like a force of nature, there’s nothing be done but wait for it to pass and enjoy the sunshine once it passes.
You’re feeding the horses mouth. Apple is well within their rights. This is great for them because nobody can say what they’re doing is wrong and it’s terrific publicity.
fwiw, the tiger incident is well documented here:
http://www.drun...ves/000369.html
Now you don’t have to wonder what Apple will do.
Oink, Oink…
I agree with Gadgetize, dont mess with the Mac users. I had to learn this the hard way with my partner at Famesource, who happens to be one of the most loyal Mac users in the world.
Allen
Famesource.com – Claim your fame!
http://www.famesource.com
Every company have a fan club. But Apple fans are definitly the worse!
OiNK isn’t actually down. Some ISPs are having DNS issues with the .me.uk domains [apparently]. OiNK works fine for me, anyways.
Nothing to do with OSX, don’t worry.
I don’t think these are Mac users being idiots – rather immature Oink members who didn’t want their precious “news” being spread. (Of course if they’re downloading Leopard they probably are Mac users, but anyway…)
Remember the golden rule – Don’t feed the trolls!
Seems as though OiNK is having DNS issues.
I haven’t tried to login myself, but the site is up and can be reached by IP: http://85.17.40.71/
So, let me see if I understand this; you posted a pointless ’story’ on Cruchgear that wasn’t news to anyone, got a nasty response for it, and now you’re posting about that as a story on techcrunch? Seriously, is cruchgear that hurting for traffic?
Is there really that little to report beyond this?
Oink users are pretty elitist. I think the pettiness comes from the considerable work groveling on forums most of them had to do to get their membership.
Oink has this strange mythology around it… whenever I’ve heard anyone talk about it, there is a strange reverence they treat it with, like it is some secret fountain of youth they want to protect. I have also heard that ANY breaks in the extremely tight Oink protocol will be punished by immediate banishment… and somehow people are supposed to be able to “track you down” if you break the rules and continue to ban you from the site long after your first infraction… and they ALWAYS catch RIAA stooges… sure!
Yes, it was on Oink, but it was on Demonoid long beforehand (at least 4 hours). Also, Oink was not down for most of the day, or at all as far as I could tell, as I was in the forums and actively downloading content all day. Way to dig for sensationalism instead of fact.
John,
A question: Why should they have any respect for a CrunchGear reporter when the CrunchGear reporter has no respect for the property of others?
Bloggers seem to demand a halo around them.
I see a lot of bloggers using freedom of speech and knowledge as a way to justify their writings and such ‘leaks’. But what about the right of property that is derived from the hard working labour that is put into it?
Bloggers are so incredibly one dimensional it ain’t even funny.
I think part of the problem is that Oink users feel their tracker is being singled out when other trackers had this before them.
Obviously that doesn’t give them the right to be offensive but I can see their point if it’s this that is irritating them.
A STRICTLY enforced rule of oink is that your avatar must be “cute.” Having a non-cute avatar is a bannable offense.
The reverence for oink comes because it is perfect. It blows the original Napster away as far as quantity, quality, and speed. I paid 5 euros for two invites a while ago and haven’t been able to get my ratio up high enough to get any more invites and I probably never will.
there was a torrent of Leopard’s latest build on Pirate Bay about 24-48 hours after the keynote. You’re way behind the curve on this. More to the point, who cares? Most of the downloaders just want to try it out and will then dump it.
It’s somewhat annoying that you troll for attention and act surprised when you get flamed.
didn’t deserve a 2nd post on TC /
– Apple can’t do much . – its out of the bag.
– maybe they can trace the leak, then fire the people.
Publicity stunt
The tech paparazzi at work.
You must be really bored.
and yes I think the response was because Oink was singled out.
Sweet, I had no idea you could download a whole Mac OS
What I think is kind of nuts is that AADC Select members are still waiting to receieve a legal seed of this beta, and we pay apple north of $500 US a year for the privelege of receiving seeds for development purposes.
The past couple of years Apple has restricted access to betas released at WWDC for months to only those who ponied up thousands of dollars to attend the conference. Now the only people who want the beta that don’t have access to it are people who legitimatly need it. Whoever manages the development program at apple needs a reality check.
Man you’re quite the fag, Arrington. You and your fag crew cried for attention and got flamed. Boo hoo.
Yawn…
Anyone have an Oink invite?
Why are all the other OiNK users such flaming homophobes? (not to mention pretentious jackasses)
I’ve just installed Leopard. Amazing!!! It looks great and works fine.
“I don’t know how his reporting on the illegal leak of a piece of software gives them the right wish awful, terrible things upon Nicholas’ family members, his mother especially, but that’s their prerogative.”
No, it’s not their prerogative : threatening or intimidating speech is not protected speech, and we all need to be less tolerant of that kind of behavior to encourage healthy debate.
Our attitude, especially among those with influence, must be : Test the strength of my arguments if you can, test the thickness of my skin to character assault if you must, but once you threaten my safety, you are no longer welcome in any forum.