The Scene - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Warez scene, mostly referred to as The Scene (often capitalized) is a term of reference used to describe an underground community of people that specialize in the distribution of copyrighted material, including television shows and series, movies, music, music videos, games (all platforms), applications (all platforms), ebooks, and pornography. The Scene itself is meant to be hidden from the public, only being shared between the groups. However, as files were leaked straight from the beginning, and the popularity of the files outside The Scene started growing, unknown individuals from The Scene itself started leaking the files and uploading them to filehosts, torrents and ed2k

EDonkey network

The eDonkey network is a decentralized, mostly server-based, peer-to-peer file sharing network best suited to share big files among users, and to provide long term availability of files...

. Today, you can see forums, blogs, websites etc. that offer either torrents, ed2k or filehost download links to files released in The Scene widely on the internet, which proves the popularity of The Scene is both global and one of the most wanted (both by regular individuals and anti-piracy organisations) communities internationally.

The Scene has no central leadership, or location, or other conventional distinguishing marks of an organization. The groups themselves create a ruleset for each Scene category (for example MP3 or TV) that then becomes the active rules for encoding such material. The groups must follow all these rules when uploading material, and if their release has a technical error or breaks a rule in this ruleset, other groups may "nuke" (more info below) their release. Groups are in constant competition to get releases up as fast as possible, even though there are no real "rewards" for their work (that is, except for access to The Scene). These rulesets include a rigid set of rules that warez group

Warez group

There are many types of groups such as release groups and courier groups. Groups often compete about being the first out with a new quality release. Being the first to release a new quality release brings status and respect....

s (grps) must follow in releasing and managing material. First appearing around the time of BBS

Bulletin board system

A Bulletin Board System, or BBS, is a computer system running software that allows users to connect and log in to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, a user can perform functions such as uploading and downloading software and data, reading news and bulletins, and exchanging...

es, The Scene primarily relates to a community of people dealing with and distributing media content for which special skills and advanced software are required.

History

The Warez scene started emerging in 1970s used by predecessors of cracking

Software cracking

Software cracking is the modification of software to remove or disable features which are considered undesirable by the person cracking the software, usually related to protection methods: copy protection, trial/demo version, serial number, hardware key, date checks, CD check or software annoyances...

and reverse engineering groups, their work made public on privately run BBSes. The first BBSes were located in the USA, but similar boards started appearing in Canada, the UK, Australia and mainland Europe. At the time setting up a machine capable of distributing data was not a trivial matter and required a certain amount of technical skill. The reason it was usually done was for the technical challenge. The BBS systems typically hosted several megabytes of material. The best boards had multiple phone lines and up to one hundred megabytes of storage space, which was very expensive at the time. Releases were mostly games and later applications.

As the world of software development evolved to counter the distribution of material and as the software and hardware needed for distribution became readily available to anyone, The Scene adapted to the changes and turned from simple distribution to actual cracking of the protections and non-commercial reverse engineering. As many groups of people who wanted to do this emerged, a requirement for promotion of individual groups became evident, which prompted the evolution of the Artscene, which specialized in the creation of graphical art

Art

Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....

associated with individual groups. The groups would promote their abilities with ever more sophisticated and advanced software, graphical art and later also music (Demoscene

Demoscene

The demoscene is a computer art subculture that specializes in producing demos, which are non-interactive audio-visual presentations that run in real-time on a computer...

).

The subcommunities (artscene, demoscene, etc.), which had nothing inherently illegal with them, eventually branched off. Also, the programs containing the group promotional material, that is coding/graphical/musical presentations evolved to become separate programs distributed through The Scene and were nicknamed Intro

Demo (computer programming)

A demo is a non-interactive multimedia presentation made within the computer subculture known as the demoscene. Demogroups create demos to demonstrate their abilities in programming, music, drawing, and 3D modeling...

s and later Cracktros.

The demoscene

Demoscene

The demoscene is a computer art subculture that specializes in producing demos, which are non-interactive audio-visual presentations that run in real-time on a computer...

grew especially strong in Scandinavia

Scandinavia

Scandinavia is a cultural, historical and ethno-linguistic region in northern Europe that includes the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, characterized by their common ethno-cultural heritage and language. Modern Norway and Sweden proper are situated on the Scandinavian Peninsula,...

, where annual gatherings are hosted even today.

Release procedure

When releasing material, the groups must first encode properly not to be 'nuked'. After the encode, they upload their files to a 'topsite' (the term used to describe an incredibly big FTP server where all the files are spread). When the upload is complete, they execute a command that causes the name and category of the release to be announced in the topsite's IRC (Internet Relay Chat

Internet Relay Chat

Internet Relay Chat is a protocol for real-time Internet text messaging or synchronous conferencing. It is mainly designed for group communication in discussion forums, called channels, but also allows one-to-one communication via private message as well as chat and data transfer, including file...

). This action is called 'preing' (or in short, 'pre') a release. Once this is done, all other releases for the same material are nuked as 'dupes' (duplicates). However, if there is a technical error or an error breaking the ruleset for the category, the original 'pre'd' release will be nuked for the mistake. Other groups then encode the same material and release it with a 'PROPER' tag in the filename. The same group can also re-encode, in which their new release is marked as 'REPACK' or (less commonly) 'RERIP'. The FTP server and this IRC are incredibly well-hidden, and closed for the public. However, unknown individuals have made their own IRC's that they then have opened to the public, which is how "PreDB" ('pre'-databases) on the Web have entered. ORLYDB.com is currently the longest-running PreDB on the Web, indexing releases as far back as the year 2000.

Each release in the Scene consists of a folder containing the material (often split into .rar parts), plus an .NFO and .SFV file. The NFO is a text file which has essential information about the file(s) encoded, including a reason for the nuke if the file is a 'PROPER' or 'REPACK' release. In more detailed examples, the NFO may contain a group's mission statement, recruitment requirements, greetings and occasionally contact info; many groups having a standard ascii art

ASCII art

ASCII art is a graphic design technique that uses computers for presentation and consists of pictures pieced together from the 95 printable characters defined by the ASCII Standard from 1963 and ASCII compliant character sets with proprietary extended characters...

template for the file---the most prolific of them exhibiting more elaborate examples. The SFV file is used to ensure that the .rar or .mp3 files of a release are working properly and have not be damaged or tampered with, via the use of checksums. This is typically done with the aid of a small, external executable (e.g. QuickSFV or SFV Checker). A failure to include an .NFO or .SFV file in the release will generally result in a nuke as these are essential components of the standard

Standard (warez)

Standards in the warez scene are defined by groups of people who have been involved in its activities for several years and have established connections to large groups. These people form a committee, which creates drafts for approval of the large groups. The first ruleset for the DivX/Xvid scene...

which the Scene staunchly adheres to.

The Scene currently has over 100 active groups releasing material. Over 500 releases are made each day, with a cumulative total of 50 million releases over the years (an exact number isn't available).

Crackers and reverse engineers

Cracking has been the core element of The Scene since its beginning. This part of The Scene community specializes in the creation of software cracks and keygen

Keygen

A license or product key generator is a computer program that generates a product licensing key, serial number, or some other registration information necessary to activate for use a software application.-Software licensing:...

s. The challenge of cracking and reverse engineering complicated software is what makes it such an attraction.

History

Release procedure

Crackers and reverse engineers

See also