Much of this material had been encoded before, during the millennial Napster frenzy. But often those encodes had been conducted haphazardly, by bedroom rippers with only a limited understanding of how the technology worked. Glitchy, low-quality files had abounded on Napster—files misnamed or mistagged, files attributed to the wrong artist, files with glaring audio flaws. There was also the music out there from the Scene, which Ellis knew of but did not participate in. To an exacting audiophile like Ellis, even the Scene wasn’t good enough. The Oink way was the only way, and Ellis was re-creating the world’s music libraries from scratch. Yes, he was saying, I know a lot of this material is out there already, but we’re going to do it again, and this time we’re going to do it right.
The strict upload ratio requirements enhanced the quality of the archive, of course, but they also implicated Oink’s user base in a potentially serious crime. As a public tracker, the Pirate Bay did not have upload requirements. You could “hit and run” there: download your torrents and disable any re-uploading, limiting your legal liability. On Oink this would get you banned. Users were forced to participate in a scheme that, depending on your viewpoint, was either a laudatory attempt to build the greatest record collection the world had ever seen or the premeditated participation in an astonishing conspiracy to defraud.
Would Oink’s users take the risk? Yes. Ellis had timed the launch of his mission well. The ancient race of vinyl enthusiasts who had once haunted record stores and swap meets was dying out, superseded by a mutant breed of torrent obsessives. The snobbishness and exclusivity of Oink were exactly what this new group was looking for: a place to show off their dismissive, elitist attitudes about both technology and music. The High Fidelity types were still concerned with high fidelity, of course; only now, instead of exchanging angry letters about phonograph needles in the back pages of Playboy, they flamed one another over the relative merits of various mp3 bit rates in hundred-page threads on the Oink forums.
The stricter the site’s rules became, the more people showed up. Invitations became a hot commodity, and of course this only fueled demand. Seeking to fortify his archive, Ellis implemented ever stricter upload ratio requirements. He instituted a hierarchical system of user classes. He increased moderation of the forums. And his community of obsessives responded with delight. They were pirates, sure, but what they really wanted was order.
Oink became the premier destination for the tech-obsessed music nerd (and his close cousin, the music-obsessed tech nerd). Public trackers like the Pirate Bay were overrun by plebs, while Oink members were knowledgeable, cool, and occasionally even socially well adjusted. By the end of 2004, several thousand users had signed on, the kind of core base of dedicated file-sharing peers that could support exponential growth. Ellis’ ability to serve the site from his bedroom was quickly outstripped. He enlisted technical support from the site’s users and found like-minded administrators to help him meet demand. He migrated the site from Windows XP to Windows Server 2003, then to Linux. The physical location of the hosting computer moved to other users’ bedrooms, in search of high-bandwidth connections—first to a small town in Canada, then to an apartment in Norway, then finally to a professional server farm in Holland.
Hosting bills began to mount. By December, the tracker cost several hundred dollars a month to maintain. In early 2005, Ellis posted the address of a PayPal account for the site and made a polite request for donations. Cash began to trickle in, denominated in currencies from all over the globe.
More than money, Oink’s army donated labor. They built out the archive, and their enthusiasm for this venture put even the Scene to shame. Oinkers uploaded their own CD collections, and the CD collections of their friends. Some of the site’s elite “torrent masters” uploaded a thousand albums or more. As Scene participants had done before them, Oinkers started to search eBay for rarities and import pressings. As record stores started closing, Oinkers showed up to buy their fire sale inventory in bulk, and these compulsive uploaders were the music retailers’ last, best customers.
First, there were 1,000 albums. Then 10,000. Then 100,000. Ellis the elitist presided over it all. It was a beautiful thing: no low-quality encodes, no fakes, no dupes, no movies, no TV shows. Just music. All of it, in perfect digital clarity. All the music ever recorded.
CHAPTER 14
The heat from TheFix leak died off quickly. Plant management didn’t seem to suspect Glover, nor his confederates. Chaney Sims, the busted smuggler, stayed quiet, as did Glover’s bootleg DVD customers. He continued to work his shifts, and the bosses warmed to him. Toward the end of 2002, he was given a promotion to assistant manager.
It had taken a long time—much longer than at Shoney’s—but seven years of overtime shifts had finally led him to a position in management. The new job paid better, with benefits and stability. But having reached this endgame, he now found it unsatisfying, and, inevitably, his thoughts were drawn back to the Scene. If he wasn’t a secret hero to the Internet underground, then what was he? Assistant manager notwithstanding, he remained an anonymous hump in a manufacturing facility facing child support, rent, utility bills, and all the rest. Plus, he still wanted a better car.
He was well positioned for a return to the Life. The new job took him off the factory floor and placed him in an office, where he managed the other workers and scheduled shifts for the temps. He was a participant in certain privileged conversations, had better visibility on plant security, and was tasked with controlling leaks himself. Better still, Steve Van Buren, the architect of the plant’s security regime, had been pushed aside. Following a shift in organizational thinking, he’d been moved to managing environmental and safety oversight. Plant security now reported to HR, and Glover got the sense the touchy-feely administrators there weren’t paying such close attention.
Another factor worked in his favor. With inside access, he now understood that neither he nor Dockery had ever been targeted by plant security. The investigation into The Fix had not pointed to them. Glover—black, tattooed, and muscular—and Dockery—fat, white, and Baptist—did not fit the profiles of elite Web pirates. Their technology skills did not appear on their résumés and their supervisors didn’t understand their capabilities. In this regard they had a pronounced and permanent advantage: they were beneath suspicion.
In early 2003, after a hiatus lasting just a few months, Glover reconnected with Kali. He wanted back in. After some discussion, the two reached an agreement. Glover would continue providing albums, but Kali would have to be more patient. He’d have to wait to distribute the leaks until the discs had left the plant and made their way to the regional warehouses. It was a counterintelligence strategy, basically: to find the source of the leak, Universal would have to investigate their whole supply chain, not just the Kings Mountain plant.
Kali reluctantly agreed. He didn’t want Glover to get caught, but he was worried that if they waited too long to leak, some other release group would scoop them and they wouldn’t get credit. Glover’s absence had created a vacuum, and RNS’ rivals had been regaining the ground they’d lost after being pummeled for the last two years. Scene groups like EGO and ESC were scoring high-profile leaks in pop and rock, and even beating RNS on its home turf of rap and R&B. With Glover out of commission, RNS had missed the 8 Mile soundtrack when it came through the plant. They’d missed Beyoncé’s solo debut. They’d missed Mariah Carey’s Charmbracelet. Worst of all, they’d missed R. Kelly’s Chocolate Factory, despite having a leaked CD in hand from another source. Throttled by a slow cable modem, they had lost the distinction of leaking the remix to “Ignition”—the best song of the decade—by a matter of seconds.