Six OiNK Users Arrested in the U.K.

The British police announced last week that they had arrested six people who allegedly used the illegal torrent site OiNK (which was shut down last October) to download album leaks. The arrests were made in late May, and the suspects were charged with suspicion of conspiracy to defraud the music industry. OiNK, the celebrated bit torrent site, was shut down in October 2007 by the Interpol, International Federation of the Phonographic Industry and the British Phonographic Industry, who all had a hand in the six arrests. Two of the people arrested reportedly only downloaded a single album. All six have since made bail.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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