Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA)
RnBXclusive.com was one of the most popular music blogs dedicated to latest and hottest music.
They have a fan page on Facebook liked by about 252,000 fans. As of today when I visited their fan page about 1,284 Facebook users were talking about that page. Their Twitter account, RnBXclusive.com (@RnBXclusive_v3), has about 9,700 followers.
The site description on Facebook and Twitter is as follows:
RnBXclusive.com is dedicated in bringing you the latest and hottest music around since 2008.
Facebook Fan Page
The popular music blog I am talking about is now shut down. Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) of UK has taken control of the site’s domain name. The individuals behind the website have been arrested for defrauding the music industry by posting links to copyright music.
SOCA also warning visitors to the website by putting up a message on the landing page:
If you have downloaded music using 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.
SOCA tackles serious organised crime that affects the UK and our citizens. This includes Class A drugs, people smuggling and human trafficking, major gun crime, fraud, computer crime and money laundering.
Read more About SOCA
So far so good. But what is very disturbing is that SOCA is noting down your IP, browser, OS, time and date of your visit to the website.
SOCA is even threatening you that your information can be used to identify you and your location.
SOCA further says that they have the capability to monitor and investigate you, and can inform your internet service provider of these infringements.
Check out the Warning Message screen-grab below:
I have never visited the site before as I am never in the habit of downloading illegal stuff. But as a blogger I do my study before I write any article. After I learn the news, I wanted to visit the site to check out things. Merely visiting a website doesn’t make one an offender. Instead of scaring away visitors, SOCA should educate them to stay away from illegal downloads.
Do you support SOCA’s threatening tone in the warning message? Share your opinion by writing your valuable comments.
3 Comments
I’m pissed that I got my Ip logged and a treat like that just because I went there out of curiosity and without reading the full article before visiting the site…
HAHA i just visited there website ,after reading this article ,the crime is committed by website owner not users i guess , so i believe that SOCA is doing nothing wrong .its like showing eyes to the users ,obviously downloading any material is not crime if its free like YouTube ,its the responsibility of site owner to not to use it for commercial use, down loader also cannot use it for commercial use .only if downloader is also using site for commercial use its a crime.
Its silly on their part to scare away visitors. They should rather educate them against illegal downloads.