Introduction
Don’t lie, I know that you already downloaded a cracked video-game, watched a movie that you got for free or listened to stolen mp3 files.
Have you ever wondered where do these files come from, who created them and uploaded them on the website where you found them ?
I will try to answer those questions in this post called “What is The Scene ?”.
Some other posts will follow this one, going deeper in the subject.
I will not mention any place where you can get a free copy of your favorite video-game, if you are here for that, you can leave.
Let’s describe el camino that a release takes before being downloaded… 🛣️
What is The Scene ?
It is a worldwide and organized network of pirate groups.
Also called the Warez scene, its goal is specialized in redistributing illegally digital media for free and as fast as possible.
The Scene can be represented by the following diagram (this will be the summary of this post) :
Release groups 👑
W4r3z 🏴☠️
Have you ever heard of Warez groups ?
These are teams of skilled hackers involved in creating warez.
Warez / W4r3z defines the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted goods. The word is a plural for “ware” (short for software)
The warez scene emerged in the 70s in USA and then spread in Europe and the rest of the world.
Warez teams have strong motivations and follow rules and standards.
Usually, what motivates Warez groups the most is the challenge, succeed where other groups failed !
Groups are constantly working in order to release as fast as possible.
P2P groups 👥
Something that is really important to note is that Warez groups don’t release their content outside of their network.
Groups / people releasing content for the “outside world” are called P2P (Peer-to-Peer Groups).
Their content is of better quality and less rushed out than Warez groups releases. Also, they release their warez directly to P2P or DDL (direct download) websites.
Couriers (also called Traders or Racers) 🏎️
Couriers are people having access to topsites (term refering to FTP servers used by Warez groups) and distributing them.
They race between each other to access to other topsites and keep their access.
Indeed, if a racer group isn’t efficiant enough, it is considered useless and kicked out from topsites by Warez groups.
Leechers
This word designates people downloading more than they seed (upload).
Actually, they turn off their BitTorrent client when they got the media they needed, interrupting the seeding phase.
To understand why it isn’t good for the torrent ecosystem to not seed, I recommend you to read about the BitTorrent protocol.
However, it is used to talk about the community at the bottom of the hierarchy, enjoying release teams work.
Conclusion
I hope that this post helped you to get a global vision of The Scene.
Of course, my goal isn’t to incitate anyone to download illegally. I just wanted to make you understand how does this big ecosystem work as it is a subject that makes me very curious.
The Scene is very dangerous place to be and not many crackers are left.
The risk of being caught is huge. That’s why many of them are actually from Eastern countries, China etc. because it makes it harder for FBI to find them.
My next article will be about Denuvo.
Do not hesitate to tell me if you think that I made any mistake in this post !
🫶🏼