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Have You Been Punked By TOTC?

torrentfreak.com — For the last four years people have been downloading the latest albums of their favorite artists, blissfully unaware that they have been modified. From The Pirate Bay to OiNK, downloaders have been getting unique versions, unavailable in the shops, all thanks to The Overdub Tampering Committee.

Who dugg this? Made popular Jan 8, 2008

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129 Comments

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  • kajoob, on 01/08/2008, -2/+189Maaaaan, I was wondering why all my AC/DC songs have accordion solos.
  • Dradu, on 01/08/2008, -9/+107Proof or GTFO.
  • mrfreeziexp, on 01/08/2008, -5/+67what huge douchebags.
  • muffins, on 01/08/2008, -1/+61im calling *****.
  • xNIBx, on 01/08/2008, -4/+49Buried as inaccurate. Oink had extremely high standards. No reencodes, no nothing. The vast majority of uploads were either personal rips or scene releases. People didnt dare uploading ***** that they found elsewhere, because if they did that and it was reencode or had other issues, they could lose their uploading rights(or worse). Also oink never let custom releases/collections, they only let official albums to be uploaded. This is what kept the quality high. Everything was double and triple checked by both users and staff.

    RIP Oink.

    PS I like turtles and waffles.
  • fkr3, on 01/08/2008, -1/+44"Nothing". The whole story sounds ridiculous and looks like it's been written for ad impressions.
  • Rowan187, on 01/08/2008, -1/+42ohhh. that would explain why Maroon 5 sound like they suck... OH WAIT NO... mine's legit.
  • ajchavar, on 01/08/2008, -1/+39why did you download evan almighty?
  • cheeseron, on 01/08/2008, -2/+37This is useless without examples
  • Ploppyplop, on 01/08/2008, -7/+40This is absolutely hilarious. I wonder what the actual extent of the 'tampering' is though...
  • evil-doer, on 01/08/2008, -0/+28ya they brag about it being so widespread yet dont give a single example. *****.
  • DontEatTheFish, on 01/08/2008, -2/+29we need proof, but this story is ***** hilarious, I got 70gb of music on my ipod, all form torrents... I probably have lots of their music.

    hang on, something is odd about their site, the only thing on there is "let us introduce ourselves", and it seems to only be in 2008, maybe they are just starting to do it.
  • remisser, on 01/08/2008, -0/+25It's highly unlikely that this story is true. However, I bet this is going to inspire a lot of people. Expect to hear Tay Zonday doing backup vocals on "Hurt" by Nine Inch Nails.
  • shadus, on 01/08/2008, -6/+30If i can't tell the difference between the original artist and the tampered version... who gives a crap. Not like mp3s are lossless anyways.
  • gnslngr1919, on 01/08/2008, -0/+19There are at least 2 things wrong with this comment.
  • nerdtalker, on 01/08/2008, -2/+20Stick to good quality scene releases, and you won't have any of this crap. Re-tag what you download with the likes of Music Brainz, and it's even less likely. If it doesn't have a good quality match, it's bullcrap, and gets deleted in my library.

    Played on the radio? Cite what station and what song. We can sit here and pretend to have pulled one over all the thousands that downloaded your torrent, or we could point to the scene which RLSes the best quality ***** all day long, 24/7. Proof or GTFO? I'd say just GTFO, they have no proof.
  • nymphetamine, on 01/08/2008, -3/+21I've never been punked by them, but I did download an Evan Almighty DVDRIP with Harry Potter spoils in them: http://www.dailymotion.com/nymph3tamine/video/x2lc ...

    Luckily I don't care at all about Harry Potter, but I'm sure there were a ton of people that were pissed about this.
  • thecosmicpope, on 01/08/2008, -0/+17Anyone can claim anything they want. It is another thing to prove it.
  • fkr3, on 01/08/2008, -1/+17Not only did no one notice it, the source is a one-page blogger blog started two days ago.

    The logic and logistics are just ridiculous.... a bunch of commercial musicians decided to combat piracy by making so-subtle-nobody-noticed overlays of themselves on other people's work, then re-distributing the modified version? Not only that but they've been doing it for years? And coincidentally these musicians are against record labels too and believe music should be pirated?

    Give me a break.

    As with all torrentfreak crap it's questionable at best, and was produced explicitly to pander to copyright infringers' beliefs so they'll digg it and notch up some ad impressions.
  • ricree, on 01/08/2008, -0/+15If no one noticed it until they pointed it out, who really cares anyways. I'd hardly call it being "punked".
  • LValentino, on 01/08/2008, -3/+17False.
  • whiledo, on 03/25/2009, -0/+13This kind of smacks of a hoax. They claim they're doing it to punish illegal downloaders, but what they did would be highly illegal as well. Especially considering that to be successful, they needed to be some of the original seeders who provided the music to large numbers of people. These are the kind of people that tend to be bigger targets for the RIAA.
  • adooga, on 01/08/2008, -0/+12Rolls. Not Roll's.
    Sorry, I can't help it.
  • TheCheeks, on 01/08/2008, -0/+11No proof.
  • Jenadae, on 01/08/2008, -1/+12Seeing how anal people on Oink and other music enthusiast sites are i highly doubt this is true. Don't gives these guys the promotion they think they deserve and bury this *****
  • xyzunit, on 01/08/2008, -1/+12They can't make popular music any *****, so we should probably be thanking them.
  • LastDitchHero, on 01/08/2008, -0/+11When will I get credit for Rick Rolling people in the middle of a DIVX rip?
  • nbx909, on 01/08/2008, -0/+10proof by them or a 3rd party is needed. interesting concept though.
  • contradictator, on 01/08/2008, -1/+10I can totally see them replacing "I Hurt myself today, to see if I still bleed" with "I move my head away from the mic to breathe"...
  • moldykorn, on 01/08/2008, -0/+9I thought it was some retard referring to www.totse.com
  • ewsherm, on 01/08/2008, -3/+11There is going to be an epic amount of Rick Roll's...
  • mike818, on 01/08/2008, -1/+9It must suck to know you spent countless hours editing music to find out that nobody noticed, and to top it off nobody gave a crap.
  • Shamonue, on 01/08/2008, -0/+8Can I get that number from you?
  • id10, on 01/08/2008, -1/+8I agree with all those calling this *****. No examples of songs, no names of artists. For all I know it could be Vanilla Ice and his DJ. I haven't noticed it in the 40gb of music I have downloaded, and I consider myself somewhat of an audiophile. From the "evidence" they're giving on this so called blog it could all obviously be total *****. I just hope this doesn't make the top 10 and these ***** get the attention they're craving.

    p.s. blog is not in the digg spell check?
  • vfx2k4, on 01/08/2008, -1/+8Either total ***** or who gives a *****? Either way this is further proof Digg and sucking ass often collide in one link...
  • gldfshnpcklejar, on 01/08/2008, -1/+8ditto, I call *****, hoax, etc. If they do eventually post proof, we're all just gonna get rick roll'd
  • Lyanto, on 01/08/2008, -0/+6http://www.bash.org/?814888
  • MajorOutage, on 01/08/2008, -0/+6Bury for *****.
  • xgkx, on 01/08/2008, -0/+6 examples or it didn't happen/
  • solistus, on 01/08/2008, -1/+6No, ***** them for being elitist ***** and releasing personal information on torrent site owners for "leaking" "their" warez. The ones who share their results don't call themselves sceners or make arrogant comments about sticking to the scene for files. At any rate, it doesn't take any special talent to seed a damn album rip.
  • everfalling, on 01/08/2008, -0/+5they did that with the movie CLUE. there were 3 different endings that played at random theaters. When you see the movie on TV or on DVD they play the endings back to back, but if you saw it for the first time, the who-done-it would have been different from the one your friend saw at a different theater.
  • petershultz, on 01/08/2008, -0/+5or pigeons having sex.
  • inactive, on 01/08/2008, -0/+4Without any comparison, it sounds fake. buried for no proof.
  • pastasauce, on 01/08/2008, -0/+4I think this article is the real hoax, just to make us go through our music and trying to guess if it's really the song or not... Either way, this is brilliant. Wide spread paranoia.
  • mrtruffle, on 01/08/2008, -0/+4Anyone got any examples? I want to hear the fake versions
  • DivisibleByZero, on 01/08/2008, -0/+4I always thought it would be cool to make a movie with two subtly different endings, and not tell anybody about it but just release one version to an incredibly small number of theaters and watch as people's friends thought they were crazy. "What are you talking about? The dude totally didn't die in the end!"
  • protogenxl, on 01/08/2008, -0/+4There really should be a "Proof or GTFO" bury category
  • MrTito, on 01/08/2008, -0/+4Validity of the group's claim aside, does this change liability for downloading some music? If they re-recorded, altered, or otherwise remixed a song and distributed it it's, no longer the exact original work protected the copyright. So can the RIAA take down a user who has these modded songs, or does the liability rest with the modders for releasing an unauthorized work?
  • Grimdotdotdot, on 01/08/2008, -0/+4Looks like ***** to me. Which isn't surprising, given the use of the word 'punked' in the title.
  • sevenslashfour, on 01/08/2008, -0/+4I wouldn't be surprised if they actually didn't do this at all, and only -confess- it to ***** with everyone's head. Think about it.

    Now people think they did this, because they say they did. But they don't cite examples as proof, so you don't know what they did it to. They become the "phenomenon" they aim for with a difficult-to-prove-or-disprove confession, and they could very well have done absolutely nothing at all.
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