Yesterday, the OiNK BitTorrent tracker was raided and shutdown, not by the MPAA but by real life, bona fide police, working hand in hand with industry association, the IFPI. The war against BitTorrent - usually played out on the civil law arena - has suddenly found itself in the criminal domain. The rules have changed.

With the whole BitTorrent community asking themselves what comes next, a clear indicator has come from a lawyer who works for the industry prosecuting file-sharers:

Norway is next and raids are imminent.

Espen Tøndel is a Norwegian lawyer well known for his legal defeat against ‘DVD Jon‘. He is currently working with the Norwegian branch of the IFPI and MPAA.

Tøndel says the Norwegian police are prepared and ready to carry out raids against Norwegian sites. Everything is in place.

When asked to identify the sites, Tøndel refused to elaborate other than to say that the investigation has been underway for some time and that enough names and evidence has already been gathered to make prosecutions in several cases.

When questioned about the possible fate of Norwegian members of OiNK specifically, nothing further was added other than to stress the close co-operation between British, Dutch and Norwegian police.

Tøndel also speculates on who might be prosecuted if the OiNK database is available to police. His thoughts range from suggesting people who upload and downloaded a lot might be in trouble, right through to ‘random individuals’. Or maybe there is another possibility?

Maybe the police don’t have usable lists.

According to the article, a source has stated that the OiNK membership list was not only encrypted, but also equipped with a ’self-destruct’ type mechanism which relied on a regular signal to continue in ‘OFF’ mode.

Although unconfirmed, this situation would be of some comfort to OiNK’s 180,000 members.