back to article UK cops cuff suspect after RnBXclusive takedown

Blighty's Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) has arrested an individual in connection with the closure of UK music exchange site rnbxclusive.com, an agency spokesperson told The Reg. In a statement, SOCA cops said they had taken action against the website as part of a criminal investigation and stated that the person was …

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  1. g e
    FAIL

    " leading the industry to attribute"

    That old assclown bullshit again. I attribute all the suffering in the world to Big Media. There I said it and now it's on the intertubes so it must be true. Won't someone think of the starving children and shut these companies down ?

    I just made 35 copies of somesong.mp3 into different directories on my HD. I have "COST" them 35 sales.

    Later I shall write a script to endlessly replicate the file until the disk is full. This should "cost" the MAFIAA ... A MEEEEELLION POUNDS!!!!!

    Need a Dr Evil pinky-in-mouth icon :oD So FAIL instead cos well, it's Big Meeja innit.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Much of the music offered ... was illegally obtained from artists

    How? Did he break into their houses and steal their CDs?

    How exactly do you go about obtaining music from an artist, legally or illegally? Are we talking about artists who don't have record companies?

    Oh, sorry. I was attempting to parse badly written text composed by the clueless. My mistake

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Facepalm

      Illegally obtained music

      This can be achieved by, for example, copying an mp3 where there are copyright provisions that make this illegal.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        @ Titus

        Yes, we know you struggle with many basic concepts Titus, but I'll try and help you understand anyway - his point was not how obtaining a music track can be done so illegaly, but how it was obtained from the artists illegaly. If it was obtained from the artists illegaly it implies it was an MP3 file owned by the artist that the person behind the site copied, and so the question is how did he get access to the artists personal MP3 collection?

        Obviously he didn't, he probably obtained it from some random person's computer on the internet illegaly, not the artist. His point is that the police have made a loaded statement that implies that someone has directly taken something from the artist who does the actual work themself, when in reality his actions probably had no direct link to the artist themselves, only at best to the music publisher. It's loaded because people associate taking something from a hard working artist to be more of a sin than taking something from a faceless megacorp strongly involved in government corruption and who themselves have a long history of screwing the artist. The police officer has made his statement in such a way as to advance the agenda of such corporations, almost as if his statement was written by them directly and he was just parroting their words to try and get sympathy for their action.

        The fact is, many people could probably give little fuck about the SERIOUS ORGANISED Crime Agency going after something that's actually not that serious, and most certainly not organised crime when they could be going after any number of serious, organised crime groups such as those responsible for trafficing thousands of people in and out of the UK each year.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Thumb Down

          Re: @ Titus

          The idea of copyright which I have mentioned above is that the creator of the work is paid as and when the work is copied. By circumventing copyright this site (it is alleged) is depriving the creators of payment. Whist the statement may be paraphrased as ‘illegally obtained from the artists’ this does seem to summarise the situation.

          You mention above copying the mp3 from somebody other than the creators computer, and thus the creator is not deprived of the work, but it is the very act of copying which is illegal. You also mention above your lack of sympathy for the corporations who frequently act as a distribution conduit for the creators of original work, and imply that this is perhaps a ‘victimless crime’. Yet maybe you should think about how the creators of work are paid by a royalty from these very corporations, and thus by making copies the creator is still deprived.

          Whilst I agree that there may be more obvious priorities for SOCA. Unlike you I view their involvement as a consequence of the prevailing attitude displayed by your post rather more than your spurious statements of government corruption.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Re: @ Titus

            Look Titus, you don't understand the concept of copyright do you? Copyright is a 'right' that the 'owner' of a work has to impose restrictions on how that file can be copied - under civil law. At no point can it ever be considered illegal unless you are directly charging people money for the copy. It is an infringement of rights (aka a tort) and falls outside the jurisdiction of the police.

            Ergo, you cannot make an 'illegal' copy of a file unless you make the copy illegally - ie: you break and enter the owner's property to do so, or somesuch.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Illegally obtained music

        "This can be achieved by, for example, copying an mp3 where there are copyright provisions that make this illegal."

        In the UK, where the SOCA operate, there are no such provisions in criminal law. Copyright falls squarely into the realm of civil law provisions which make it at most unlawful, but damages must be sought by the owners of the rights through the court system, which is as it should be. Involving law enforcement agencies in the machinations of corporate money-making is pure fascism.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Stop

          Re: Re: Illegally obtained music

          Except when the copies are made for commercial gain. Mind the charges brought on this occasion seem to be for fraud. Both these are criminal charges and will therefore involve the law enforcement agencies.

          It is also the sheer scale of these activities that gets the state involved in these disputes. There are various comments below about making copies for trial purposes, for a couple of friends, and so on. But realistically if you make a copy of an mp3 available for 250, 000 people it is then difficult to claim that all of the downloads aren't people just downloading because they can't be bothered to pay.

  3. Citizen Kaned

    when will they learn....

    that 1 copy doesnt equal missed sale.

    when i used to download music (many years ago. we buy all our music these days) i used to download loads of albums to see what they were like. try before you buy, if you like.

    this DOES NOT mean i would have bought the album if it wasnt available to download.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      The familiar cry of the freetard.......

      and how many of them did you buy?

      1. John G Imrie

        3 copies = 1 sale

        I've posted this story before but it bares retelling here.

        When I was a youngster The average price of a game for my ZX Spectrum was £5.

        The Hobbit adventure game was released and retailed at £20.

        My self and 3 friends clubbed together to get a copy that we copied and shared among our selves.

        If we had not been able to club together and buy one copy between the 4 of us the non of us would have bought a copy.

        So copying the game lead directly to one additional sale, where as according to the maths of the RIAA etc I caused 3 lost sales.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: The familiar cry of the freetard.......

        IMHO, when you resort to calling someone a retard, albeit with "free" in front of it to make believe you are not just being nasty, you reveal that you have no salient point to argue, or you are a troll.

        I thought his post was perfectly clear and made a valid point.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: The familiar cry of the freetard.......

        When you're looking for a piece and aren't sure of the track title, or the artist, you might want to listen to the track before purchasing it. This is why music stores had/have those sampler stands available where customers can listen to an artist to see if it's what they were looking for.

        So yes, download the track, listen to it, find it is what you're after and go make the purchase. Or find it's a remix, cover copy, or utter rubbish with a similar title, and delete it instead, and incidentally saving your pennies for the music you like, supporting the bands you like, and not encouraging the utter rubbish some bands have put out in the past.

        It's why I like Amazon - I can check the tracks to see if they're what I thought they were. After all, various artists have released different versions of the same song, and I might be after a specific version (live v studio, vocal v instrumental etc).

        So not everyone who downloads (or downloaded) was stealing: Some of us were after samplers and those weren't available, so made do with the full song instead. Oh, and sometimes the only way to get a song is via download until some music company gets of it's rump and releases it again, hopefully without some soundbox back-beat rubbish that ruins it, or overlaying another singer's voice just to make it sound 'new', or some other garbage like that.

        1. WorkingFromHome

          Re: The familiar cry of the freetard.......

          The idea that this is just a typical cry from those who don't want to pay for something isn't entirely true.

          I don't know how old other people here are but when I was a kid we would all record songs from the radio and swap LP's. If that had not been possible then we still wouldn't have bought any more - the number of LP's we bought (and we all bought plenty) was limited by the money had, not what we wanted.

          I agree that this idea that the ideology that everything should be free is silly, but the idea that every single download is a lost sale is equally silly. It just adult discussion of the problem impossible as the numbers become ridiculous. If you want to fix a problem you have to work the real problem, not a made up fantasy one.

          Just my 2p

      4. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: The familiar cry of the freetard.......

        I also used to download albums to listen to before putting down my hard earned cash and I've easily spent over £15,000 plus on music over the past 11 years. And you?

      5. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: The familiar cry of the freetard.......

        "freetard" of course being a term coined by Dan Lyons, in one of his copyrighted articles.

  4. g dot assasin
    FAIL

    15 Million in losses....

    So 1 Download = 1 lost sale?

    What a load of bollocks

    1. ArmanX

      Actually...

      It's somewhere around 1300 downloads equals one lost sale. They're just assuming everyone downloads those $12 000 songs.

  5. techfruit
    Thumb Down

    They did more than link to mixtapes containing some illegal mp3s, if you take a look on Archive.org about their content over last summer - they were posting straight mp3s of singles from Leona Lewis, Mel C, and Kelly Clarkson amongst others.

    The majority of music blogs try to help and promote artists, but posting top40 singles is simply infringing copyright to gain web traffic and something which should be stopped to be honest.

    http://www.techfruit.com/2012/02/15/soca-takes-down-uk-music-blog-rnbxclusive/

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Leona Lewis, Mel C, and Kelly Clarkson?

      Hanging's too good for 'em!

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @techfruit

      If that's true then I agree so send in the guys who arrest market traders for selling knock off Gucci handbags not fucking SOCA.

      1. techfruit

        Re: @techfruit

        You can see the sort of stuff they were offering for download using Archive.org

        http://web.archive.org/web/20110715191137/http://rnbxclusive.com/

  6. An ominous cow herd
    Coat

    Thank you very much ElReg for including a link to the site

    I clicked on the link and now I'm a criminal in the (twisted) eyes os SOCA!

    Well, I'll mail you my attorney's fees...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Thank you very much ElReg for including a link to the site

      Don't forget that El reg can now be done for conspiracy. After all they incited you to visit the lair of the nefarious electron bandits.

  7. Tony Paulazzo
    Big Brother

    >Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) has arrested an individual in connection with the closure of UK music exchange site rnbxclusive.com<

    Well, thank God all the murderers, rapists, wife batterers, happy slappers, and kiddy fiddlers are all behind bars, so the 'Serious Organised Crime Agency' can get to all the seriously organised criminal web sites out there.

    Seriously? I wonder how many guns it took to arrest that individual, was he headed for his safe room in his ill gotten mansion? Point of fact, how does an individual get seriously organised & criminal?

    1. Adrian Jackson
      FAIL

      You're as bad as they are...

      The idea that because there are murderers, rapists and what have you out there, no less serious crime should be investigated by anyone (a line normally used by people who've been caught speeding and want to try to justify it to themselves) is every bit as pathetic and inaccurate as the idea that each unlicensed download has a direct cost to the music industry.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        @Adrian Jackson

        That's isn't even close to what he meant and are are you really trying to say that music downloading is a suitable crime for SOCA to be dealing with when there are human traffickers, child pornography rings and god knows what else going on?

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: You're as bad as they are...

        "The idea that because there are murderers, rapists and what have you out there, no less serious crime should be investigated by anyone"

        The clue is in the name "SERIOUS ORGANISED CRIME AGENCY" (SOCA). I think you're confusing them with the "LESS SERIOUS ORGANISED CRIME AGENCY" (LSOCA).

  8. Eddie Edwards
    WTF?

    Good grief

    I can't quite get my head around this. That trollish takedown notice actually was from the Serious Organised Crime Agency? What the hell? Seriously, what the hell?

    1. CaptainHook
      Facepalm

      The Hilarious Message

      It don't care that a pirate music site has been taken down, I never listen to music, but that message is pure gold.

      A perfect example that SOCA are nothing more than a political tool for big business.

      It almost reads like the author is trying to convince themselves that this is something SOCA should be dealing with.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I lost £15m in revenue too

    I believe my car is very artistically painted. I believe a picture of it is worth about £10. So, SOCA, please prevent anyone illegally obtaining these pictures by removing all those big yellow cameras from the road side.

    1. PatientOne

      Re: I lost £15m in revenue too

      What big yellow cameras? They're empty boxes these days.

  10. Ryan Kendall
    Meh

    Oh noes

    I can't get every song ever published for free anymore. Well... at least from this site.

    This is the problem with something that is so prolific, as soon as one site goes down another comes up usually on a server housed "Outside the UK". Then again even having a link pointing to another site now seems go get you into trouble.

    Look at Richard O'Dwyer who ran TVShack.

  11. ACx

    Shame the 250,000 followers dont seem to give much of a toss. I mean, if they were to all flood say the BBC with email and phone calls, then it would be a big story, and something might happen. But no. Every one just shrugs and walks on.

    Its like all this bleating about Apple using essentially slavery to build its products. Every one knows, people still buy enough to make Apple billions.

    No one cares. End of.

    1. deive
      Coat

      Apathy... sorry can't be bothered to finish this comment.

  12. Crisp
    Trollface

    Surely that can't be the only music site.

    Time to Google another then...

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "...(SOCA) has arrested an individual ..."

    "...in connection with the closure of UK music exchange site rnbxclusive.com."

    Indeed. Whoever sanctioned the piss-poor and juvenile take-down notice should be banged away for bringing SOCA into disrepute.

  14. Thaddeus Quay

    T.I.T.L.E.

    "As a result of illegal downloads young, emerging artists may have had their careers damaged."

    Young? Yet another law designed to protect the children. How can we possibly be against that? On a more serious note, here's a pretty good article on the history of copywrong. For the UK readers, there's a lot in there about you. Apparently, you all started this whole mess.

    http://questioncopyright.org/promise

  15. irish donkey
    FAIL

    Interesting story on the BBC

    Record label Sony apologises for increasing the price of two Whitney Houston albums, hours after her death on Saturday.

    Not on el reg.

    funny that

    1. The BigYin
      FAIL

      Re: Interesting story on the BBC

      Ah, I must be imagining this

      A lag of 15 mins is not that bad and not a conspiracy. The news will hit different sources at different times.

      Calm down dear, it's only a website.

  16. nsld
    Black Helicopters

    farcical

    The message from SOCA was hysterical.

    10 years in prison for downloading from a site? I thought the criminal aspect was to download then distribute which is a little different from simply downloading.

    And we wonder why society is the way it is when our police service becomes another civil enforcement service for industry.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    IFPI probably wrote this bullshit.

    > Visit pro-music.org for a list of legal music sites on the web.

    The whois record for pro-music.org indicates it is run by IFPI.

    The legal and technical assertions in the warning stretch the truth past breaking point and the copy contains large amounts of irrelevant opinion on the morality of copyright infringement.

    This leads me to the inevitable conclusion that this 'warning' was written by the jizz gargling fuck sticks down at the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry rather than SOCA.

    Conflict of interest much?

    1. Keep Refrigerated
      Big Brother

      Re: IFPI probably wrote this bullshit.

      pro-music.org is obviously an astroturfing site, but what is more worrying here, is that the MAFIAA are clearly shifting strategy to try and claim the authorship and ownership of actual 'music' - as in the sound medium.

      Pro-Music seems to imply that there is a 'legal' type of music and an 'illegal' type of music. This is the thin end of a wedge to cement into the public conscious that only 'legal' music comes from the MAFIAA (for other strategies, see .music TLD)

      Had this actually been written by a competent lawyer with actual knowledge of the law, the reference to an astroturf site would not be there. A less competent but able lawyer would possibly would have included a list of links of legitimate indie websites - or some kind of simple warning to make sure before you download that you are downloading from a legitimate source.

      This is troubling... how long before it's no longer a license to reproduce/sell specific MAFIAA owned artists works, instead it's a license to simply sell and produce music of any kind (i.e. your own).

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Nothing within the Crown Prosecution Services of Fraud seems to cover the attempt by SOCA to bring downloading within the charges of fraud

    http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/d_to_g/fraud_act/

  19. SJRulez

    Hmm lost sales from downloading, guess I'll go back to using tape and recording off the radio like the old days.

    If anyone feels like some fun why not browse the following:

    http://rnbxclusive.com/Sony_Have_No_Morals_So_Why_Should_We_They_Want_To_Hike_The_Houston_Price_We_Will_Just_Download.html

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Journalists are not the only people who buy the services of Police...

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/9061383/Private-firms-give-UK-police-forces-millions-of-pounds-to-investigate-crimes.html

  21. Bradley Hardleigh-Hadderchance
    Pirate

    Ahem. Yes. Quite. I like it. Remind me to use it more in conversation...

    You not only have a great line in abusive put-downs, but a point, as well, I believe.

    Read this:

    http://falkvinge.net/2011/09/05/cable-reveals-extent-of-lapdoggery-from-swedish-govt-on-copyright-monopoly/

    Fact not Fiction.

    Shocking? Yes.

    Unexpected? No.

    Something is not right somewhere.

    And I say that as a Hip-Hop Producer.

    Albeit not a young one.

  22. despairing citizen
    Stop

    SOCA

    I will start by saying I'm amazed that SOCA has actually managed to arrest anybody.

    The (dis)Organised Crime Agency will I'm sure manage to managle the case somehow between arrest and court case. (assuming there ever was a case to answer to start with)

    I also note that many years on from mass violation of CMA90, no director at Sony has ever been arrested for unauthorised access to a computer system, in relation to their illegal DRM rootkit.

    Oh, well, one law for the man in the street, and a completely different standard for large media companies (for further details see News of the Screws investigation)

    1. CaptainHook

      Re: SOCA

      "The (dis)Organised Crime Agency will I'm sure manage to managle the case somehow between arrest and court case."

      Well an obvious first misstep is the corporate/political message they tacked onto the end of the seizure notice.

      How many other criminal investigations do you see where the police use what is effectively a crime scene and where evidence is supposedly being collected, if you believe the crap "we will hunt you down" message to display a commercial message?

      It's like cordoning off the entrance to a car chop shop which has been raided but rather than just have a POLICE LINE - DO NOT CROSS tape up they have a sign up signing

      "get your cheap cheap cars at

      Honest Jims Second Hand Dealership,

      1 mile down the main road second left

      after the roundabout"

  23. Ebaneezer Wanktrollop
    FAIL

    Duh!

    C'mon people. This is the most obvious hoax I have ever laid eyes on. Look at the nameservers, the WHOIS etc. etc. This is no more SOCA than it is UNCLE.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Duh!

      The BBC are reporting it as fact, with additional statements from SOCA.

      http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17039722

      1. Nick G
        Mushroom

        Re: Re: Duh!

        According to the SOCA image on that article the music files were STOLEN from the artists. I, for one, hope that if anything by Justin Bieber et al is included that the rozzers do the decent thing & burn them so we don't have to hear them again...

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Need more jails

    250,000 people in jail for up to 10 years? Where's David Cameron going to put all the drunken youth?

    1. InsaneLampshade
      Big Brother

      Re: Need more jails

      I think they've given up on the idea of a physical jail. Just create enough laws so that the entire population becomes a criminal for some reason or other and then close the borders. Give it a year or two, we're almost there.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Re: Need more jails

        The country should then change its name to "New Australia", don't you think?

  25. Purlieu

    It's clearly a fake

    SOCA never arrested anybody ever

  26. SJRulez

    Search Engines

    How long before all these enforcement idiots figure out that the biggest facilitators of copyright infringement are google and microsoft, they index all these sites. If i want to download something I dont go checking around multiple torrent sites, I punch it in my fav search engine! The funny thing is when you search for a track etc you'll get advertisements paid for by the same companies who retain the rights..... I would have thought they would have mentioned that in their advertising agreements with said search engine companies.

  27. ElReg!comments!Pierre
    Facepalm

    At least they fixed the page

    (well, almost).

    Now with 2 syntax errors instead of 33.

  28. Is it me?

    I Can't help but think

    For SOCA to be involved, there might just be a bit more to it than illegal music downloading.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I Can't help but think

      Unless, the Soca thats' involved is the genre of music called Soca, rather than the police agency. It could be a conspiracy to promote the sound of steel drums.

  29. Ojustaboo

    I await SOCA's reply

    I emailed Soca with the following

    ----------------------

    Subject: Soca take down message on Rnbxclusives site as reported on the BBC

    Hi

    Never been to the site neither do I have any desire to do so.

    I had an in-depth discussion on music and TV piracy recently and it was brought to my attention what the law states.

    The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, as amended by the Copyright and Trade Marks (Offences and Enforcement) Act 2002, currently protects copyrighted materials. People who download copyrighted recordings without permission face civil actions. Downloading can also constitute a criminal offence if the downloader distributes the material.

    By its wording, if someone was to use bittorrent (again never been to the site in question so don't know if it was a torrent site) then technically they are distributing as they have to upload at the same time as downloading.

    But your site message stated:

    If you have downloaded music from this website you may have committed a criminal offence which carries a maximum penalty of up to 10 years imprisonment and an unlimited fine under UK law.

    That is simply 100% untrue if what I said about the copyright act is true. You haven't committed a criminal offence as the law stands and you cant get a criminal record. I know you used the word "may" but either they did something illegal or they didn't. And if its not illegal to download, then "may have done something illegal" is plain and simply wrong?

    Could you please confirm whether what I've said is right or not, and if not please explain why not?

    Many thanks

  30. Ojustaboo

    I did this Tuesday

    A true incident from just 2 days ago. I had to take my son 180 miles to look at a UNI yesterday, wanted something to listen to in the car.

    My daughter us in her 20's and away at Uni. I went in her room to get my CD set of Mitchell and Webb Sound, took one look at her room, one look at her wardrobes etc, didn't want to spend ages snooping around in her bedroom, couldn't get hold of her on her phone so as I have a very fast broadband, kicked off a torrent and downloaded the first 3 series in next to no time.

    I suspect a few people will still try to argue that what I did was stealing. And someone somewhere will still think that that means someone lost a sale.

  31. David Hicks
    WTF?

    SOCA ?

    Shouldn't they be dealing with human traffuicking, sex slavery, drug running, gang crime etc?

    You know, actual threats to the British public?

    This seems a little beneath their remit.

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