Pirating for Dummies

[ism]

Digital piracy has existed as long as digital media has existed. Trading floppies gave way to the blazing-fast Courier HST 14.4 modems. As millions of Americans are getting broadband connections, it is no longer uncommon to send movies across an ocean. A look at Usenet newsgroups and BitTorrent sites shows that anything that can be digitized will be warezed: New York Times bestsellers, comic books, needlework patterns, and maps sit alongside the venerable mp3s and games.

Ever wonder where they come from? This article at the LA Times (http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/showcase/la-fi-topsites7jan07.story) gives a pretty good explanation of the system that makes it possible. It is basically anarchy, but it is highly efficient, having evolved a bartering system of ones and zeroes to drive the logistics. Albums are pre-released and movies are playing on desktops before they are in the theatre, due to insiders and people with the means to move the data. They are driven by ego, staking a claim in digital space for their pseudonym.

Any warez monkeys here?

[Emperor_Mike]

I'm an ex-Warez Monkey. Gave the stuff up after signing my life away to info-sec. In the end it's pretty stupid to indulge in this sort of distribution.

[mr. x]

warez monkey as in savy in where to get it? sheesh i just spent a long time going to sites that "supposedly" had warez but were just endless porno popups and lists that linked to other lists that....u get the picture

is BT another phase? like say napster and kazaa, they are big and then the suits go after em and they sorta slow down.

[Kuchana]

warez monkey as in savy in where to get it? sheesh i just spent a long time going to sites that "supposedly" had warez but were just endless porno popups and lists that linked to other lists that....u get the picture

and you're actually complaining about this??? :wink:

[mr. x]

and you're actually complaining about this??? :wink:

well u know when im looking for games i DONT want porn. i wasnt that big on porn then either...umm just as i am not now, not all that much really...

[Emperor_Mike]

well u know when im looking for games i DONT want porn. i wasnt that big on porn then either...umm just as i am not now, not all that much really...

Pssst! X is a closet perve who likes warez, pass it on.

:biggrin:

[mr. x]

Pssst! X is a closet perve who likes warez, pass it on.

:biggrin:

How dare u besmirch my good name! i have never in my life associated myself with warez!

[Kuchana]

How dare u besmirch my good name! i have never in my life associated myself with warez!

Somebody's living in denial and it ain't me :biggrin:

[younggiftedandblack]

I use DC++ it pretty good at finding anything you want, but because you connect directly to just one other computer the downloads are pretty slow. It's international so there are dozens of hubs to log onto to. The only problem is for most of the good hubs you have to share a couple of gigs yourself in order to get in.

[himura-dono]

I use DC++ it pretty good at finding anything you want, but because you connect directly to just one other computer the downloads are pretty slow. It's international so there are dozens of hubs to log onto to. The only problem is for most of the good hubs you have to share a couple of gigs yourself in order to get in.

i use dc++ too, but i don't see what's wrong with, "omg, SHARING while you leech...."

maybe that's a foriegn concept...

[mr. x]

whats dc++

[younggiftedandblack]

whats dc++

You can download it here (http://dcplusplus.sourceforge.net/index.php?page=download)

It's a computer program which gives you access to a list of "hubs" or servers worldwide that have other users on them. The thing is in order to get on you HAVE to share. It all depends on which Hub you log onto. The lowest requirement I've seen is 5 gb, but I've seen it as high as 100.

Like I said before you find pretty much anything on it, but because you only directly connect to one source the downloads are slower then with Kazza.

[himura-dono]

Like I said before you find pretty much anything on it, but because you only directly connect to one source the downloads are slower then with Kazza.

only if you're not throwing out the slow dickweeds from your queue.

[Chris]

How dare u besmirch my good name! i have never in my life associated myself with warez!


i thought it was a known fact...

[ism]

I must admit, I've travelled up and down the system. In the pre-Internet days, my friend would courier from WHQ BBS's in Canada to the local HQ sites with a 14.4 modem. I still had my 2400 baud modem (for reference, that's 28 times slower than a 56k) and contented myself with moving his stuff to the bottomfeed BBS's. By the time the Internet rolled along, I was managing IRC channels for the premiere audio warez group of the time and did some other activities. I abruptly left everything to focus on college.

Ego is part of it. The access to the rest of the goods is more important. In a way, I think hoarders are more apt to do this. Most of the software, no one actually needs, it's just an item to be collected. The people that get busted have terabytes of stuff they never installed once.

But how can ego be factored in when everyone's using a pseudonym? It only matters to the people that actually know each other. People on the level below don't even keep track of that. The bottomfeeders don't give a fuck who's on the NFO. At most, they recognize the group names. It's the Wild West anew in that you're the shit only as far as your nickname's notoriety carries you. You leave the real you behind.

The system works by trading illicit goods for the work involved in trafficking them. It still doesn't explain why the people at the top do it. The crackers I've talked to like it for the challenge and they have their own circle; breaking a dongle's scheme is the currency there. The leaders get groupies and props from other group leaders. The group I was with was targetted by an anti-piracy service and was eventually driven underground.

What do the elite really get? Some great reward. Much better to be a bottom-feeder.

[ism]

is BT another phase? like say napster and kazaa, they are big and then the suits go after em and they sorta slow down.

The top level of the scene occurs through FTP. It will never go away. There are a couple distribution methods on the level below this. Usenet is one, since it spreads the burden of distribution among thousands of servers, and gives the most bang for the buck in terms of people reached.

BT seems to be rivalling Usenet now, in terms of 0-dayness. BT will be a phase unless the protocol is modified to give more protection to the tracker, unless trackers can be considered common carriers. It's just not distributed enough. Napster and Kazaa died since they are centralized and easily poisonable.

BT wasn't designed to elude legal ramifications. It's great for legal ISOs and will stick around for that. Enjoy it while it lasts, probably another year or two before it gets hobbled like Kazaa is now.

[mr. x]

BT wasn't designed to elude legal ramifications. It's great for legal ISOs and will stick around for that. Enjoy it while it lasts, probably another year or two before it gets hobbled like Kazaa is now.

i know people like the RIAA and MPAA are pretty vigilant but its harder to take down BTers right?

[ism]

i know people like the RIAA and MPAA are pretty vigilant but its harder to take down BTers right?

The data you receive comes from several peers, so no one is really transmitting an entire file, except the initial seeder. Unlike Kazaa though, everyone is transmitting, not just receiving. A sufficient chunk of intellectual property, even if not whole, is grounds for copyright infringement. If you have a client that can display it, or just watch what network connections you're making, you can see who you're sending to and who you're receiving from. With the hash checking, BT is mostly immune to poisoning.

This isn't the real problem though. I'm assuming most people get their .torrents from a website, which can be shut down easily enough. .torrents can be distributed by other means, but each one has a tracker (where a client connects to get information about where to get the data), which could also be shut down. I think the xxAA would have major problems randomly suing BT peers but I wouldn't put it past them.

[mr. x]

its just ive heard from guys on bytemonsoon's and suprnova's forums that they receive cease and desist letters from ISPs and stuff

[ism]

I'm sure they do, especially their mirrors, many of which have gone down. I donno who hosts Suprnova but when the xxAA has an army of lawyers, there is a breaking point.