How the scene works by: Acemv (18/M/Indiana) 12/12/01 01:00 am Msg: 61 of 77 Here is a brief description on how the scene works. I'll start with the highest level in the scene and how the software gets distributed. This will help the ill inform people and the ones that just don't know wtf warez is. 1. First We have the groups themselves. They consist of founding individuals, most of the founding members are not very much involve, they were originally the fuel but after a while the new recruits do most of the cracking releases. A good example of the sections in a group is this, Founders, Crackers, suppliers and couriers. The crackers disable software protection found on a game or create cdkeys/registration keys for applications. Suppliers are the insiders of the companies, could be a magazine reviwer or a worker at a company that can get his hands on a peice of software the company is working on. Couriers are in the group, they are the ones responsible for releases the releases and spreading them to other sites. 2. 2nd is the most inportant part of the warez scene. It is the ftp sites that spread the releases throughout the world. A good site have atleast a oc3 link to the internet and is running on a 100mbit network. The best sites are usually 200Mbit or 1gigabit. 100mbit site for example could send/receive data at 12.5MEG/sec, if the have the right hardware like 100mbit ide drives or even higher performance scsi drives. Most good sites contain about 300GB+ of storage space. A great site surpasses the 1terabyte marker. But these sites are usually been up for a year or 2 before they reach that status. sites are catorigize, first they have rated topsites. These sites are the ones the big groups have accts on. They are usually the fastest and are considered the backbone of piracy. These sites are usually ran by network admins at universities or corpations. So it can run without anyone knowing other than the admin himself. 2nd site is called 0sec, they are fast too. They usually have affiliations with groups as well, but are less secure than rated sites. They on the average are 200-500GB. Still a lot of storage space. Mostly on 100mbit connections and running ide drives instead of scsi. These sites are usually ran by network admins at universities or corpations. So it can run without anyone knowing other than the admin himself. 3rd sites are called 0min. These are fast themselves, but some of them are ran on t3 connections(45mbit). They average from 90-200GBs in storage space. They are somtimes affiliated with groups. They are usually ran by university students. They never last more than a few months or a year if they are lucky. Admin of the school's network love to crack down on these trouble makers. last sites that even worth being considered are 0hour sites. They are also on t3connections and sometimes are even less. They are usually ran by workers in companies or students in universities too. They are usually 10mbit. before i close the site section. I'll tell you some of the meaning in the terms. 0-sec=pirated releases reach these sites in a few seconds after it's been release by a group. 0-min=releases reach these sites in a few minutes after a release. 0-hour=figure it out einstein. 3. Couriers is the independent trader in the scene. They are mostly little kids believe it or not. Couriers spread releases by getting accts on 0-sec and rated sites. If they are lucky the accts are leech and not ratio. If it's leech then, they usually fxp(a protocol that enables server to server ftp transfers bypassing the users own connection speed limit) from the rated/osec sites to the 0min and 0hour sites. these couriers are called 0-sec couriers. they have acces on topsites(rated and 0sec sites). Some couriers only have accts on 0min and fxp to 0hour sites. the lowest of them all have only access to 0hour sites and fxp to 0-day sites. 4. Warez release sections are what really separate groups. Some release only movies while other release only games. here are the sections UTILs=are cd images of applications. They are the complete versions of the applications. ISOGAMES=these are cd images of video games. also full versions. most games have cd copying protection and the crackers in the group crack the software protection on them before they release the iamges. 0DAY=These are small apps or games rips. The small apps are like small programs usually 4meg in size that really shouldn't be release has an image because they are so small. The game rips are just normal games that have been made into smaller versions. These are the most talented of them all. They turn a 600meg game into like 80megs of download data. They usually rip out the movies and sound track of games to save space. VCD=if you don't know what a vcd is then you should die. A vcd is a Video cd. It's based on mpeg1 standards and can play in most dvd players that read cdrs. Vcds are usually screeners of movies or threatrical movies. The supplies of these things usually come from asia. Most of these movies are all just guys sitting in the back with a camcorder recording the movie. SVCD=this is the part of the scene that convert dvd movies into smaller version mpeg2 files. Dvd movies uses mpeg2 as well, but are usually higher bitrate so it's a bigger file. SVCD is just a mpeg2 format that is lower bitrate. so it's a lot smaller and can fit on cds. The quality is great if you wanted to know. You can find svcd releases of most new release dvds. MP3=Yep, you may not know this. But napster isn't the place were mp3s are release. There are groups that rip mp3s and release them across the net. That is how napster and all those other clones get mp3s. users that get the mp3s from these groups usually hang out on those sharing clients. PORN=yes, they release full dvds/vhs of porn movies. I don't know why they don't release it in svcd format, but oh well. It's still porn and we all love porn right? psx=playstation games been released for years, the psx is dying so it's not very active, but stuff still gets release. ps2=yep, ps2 games are being pirated also. dc=alas, dc was pirated to death. hehe gba=yep, they have kits for dba and images of dba games are being released. anime scene=Well most of the anime groups respect licenses, they never release licensed anime in the US. So blah, the anime scene is the best out of them all. :-) 5. Now the bad part of the scene, the damn useless mf'ers that make it bad. a. FXPboard members are really annoying. these guys are the one that hack into private business and send unsolicited warez to the servers(mostly running windows nt or 2000s, who would of thought. Yep, ms software sucks). These guys have no shame. members from other boards usually deleter uploads be members on other boards. b. Even more worse than the fxpboard guys are http warez guys. These are the ones that run those sites full of porn adds and tonz of popups. they are just lamers, usually little kids that want to make money. They are mostly responsible for virus spreading and trojans. They love to repack releases with viruses. c. Fserv groups, the lowest of the scene. These guys run their groups on irc servers. These groups usually have founding members, then high councils, Operators, dumps and then fservers themselves. 6. Now before i go, here is a few facts. Most group headquaters are based in europe, they don't like the way the feds keep busting their sites. The piracy scene involves maybe 5,000 people at the top, but counting the top people and the end users. I'd say more than a million people on the net download pirated software regulary. People think that most software groups make money by doing this, they don't. They do it because it's an hoppy. They want to help the average joe that can't pay 1,200 bucks to use some software that isn't really worth the cost. If you like a developer's software, they always emphasize to buy the software then. These guys are not hackers. they do not hack. The fbi love to put them in the same catogory has hackers, but they are not. well that should explain a few things to people that don't really know what the warez scene is like.