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Some interesting news comes to me recently. A pirated music sharing web site called OiNK has been shut down and an arrest made following a long investigation by music industry umbrella organisations IFPI and BPI.

But what has this got to do with yuku, I hear you ask? Well a while back you may recall I mentioned the special relationship that the JJB forum - an NSync fan site initially - that was on ezboard had with ezboard, Inc.: free Gold status for life and early releases of software updates (oh the irony!). There’s even a rumour that the JJB’s Adminstrator has been doing some customer services work for yuku; again unconfirmed.

Well they’ve moved over to yuku now and are using the resources there instead of ezboard to, let’s say, a mixed reception in terms of downtime, slowness, effect on other unrelated yuku forums, etc.

The JJB forum - it is claimed, though I have never seen it so it could be a completely false accusation - has a hidden forum for music sharing called Media Central, so the news about OiNK has been greeted with obvious concern. Take a look at these threads, for instance:

http://jjb.yuku.com/topic/171573/t/OMG-The-creators-of-OiNK-got-arrested-.html

http://jjb.yuku.com/topic/171642/t/Can-we-do-something-about-Media-Central.html

Maybe that’s why some people are reporting that they cannot see the forum at the moment?

Make of this what you will: as I said, most of it is unconfirmed.

Just a couple of snippets from one support thread as nothing much is happening over at yuku (well, apart from staffers disappearing; the expression “rats leaving a sinking ship” spring to mind).

Firstly, remember that one of the key ”benefits” of yuku is “google friendly URLs”. I see. Let’s look again at that support thread’s URL: it’s http://support.yuku.com/topic/3493/t/–did—-fix–wasn-t-broke—-place-.html

Somewhat different from the actual topic title of “So why did you have to fix what wasn’t broke in the first place?” Now I wouldn’t call that URL Google-friendly, would you?

Secondly, have a look at this reply in the message thread, apparently from a user called Ben. Nothing untoward there? Now read this later reply:

“Well that’s odd - I don’t remember making that post up there (#17). Maybe it’s down to bad memory on my part, but the time of the post is 7:18pm in my time zone - and I was NOT on the PC between 7pm and 7:35pm. What is going on?”

The answer? It was a yuku staffer logging in to that user’s account and posting. Yes, isn’t it reassuring to know that if your message board is on yuku or you have a user account on there, ezboard, Inc. can log into your account and post away pretending to be you without you ever being the wiser! Of course, compare that with, say, a vBulletin where as an administrator, I don’t have access to a user’s password (other than the ability to set a new one, but then they’d be aware of that).

And given the documented antics of certain staff (and indeed, ex-staff), they’re the last people I’d ever trust.