Warez: The Infrastructure and Aesthetics of Piracy
Warez: The Infrastructure and Aesthetics of Piracy (2021)
Martin Paul Eve's Warez is the first scholarly book on the Warez Scene, an underground network of pirate groups that obtain and release media before official sale dates. From pre-internet Bulletin Board Systems to 1990s topsites, Eve reveals a culture driven by competitive ranking and one-upmanship, challenging communalist views of piracy. Essential reading on digital culture and access.
Even though forms of digital piracy are often framed within ideological terms of equal access to knowledge and culture, Eve uncovers in the Warez Scene a culture of competitive ranking and one-upmanship that is at odds with the often communalist interpretations of piracy.
- lm411
The Warez scene was an absolute blast. I made some of the best friends of my early teenage years there, both online and online/offline.
Unfortunately it came to a sudden end after I got a little too cocky and persistently took and re-took control of a smallish US telecom companies network, and the RCMP came knocking on my door for the FBI. That was largely unrelated to Warez but the advice given to me was that I should probably stop that as well. Thankfully I was too young to be charged with any of it at that time.
I do regret the massive headaches I must have caused the system administrators at the telecom company. Sorry guys. I have repaid my bad karma many times.
- ryandrake
I remember warez being the sole driver of my modem upgrade path from 9600 to 14,400 to 28,800, finally to very unstable 33,600 bps, then to trying to convince my parents to order a second phone line for... uh... modem... stuff... And then, suddenly it was off to undergrad where, lo and behold there were these two weird looking "RJ45 jacks" in each dorm room, and I soon realized I'd never have to worry about modem speed again...
- MPSimmons
I still remember the day, circa 1997, that I found an anonymous-enabled FTP site on a uunet domain that had been used as a drop site by various couriers, and let me tell you, this high schooler's 540MB hard drive was not large enough.
- havaloc
Author authorized epub available here: https://github.com/gfscott/warez-the-infrastructure-and-aest...
- milchek
This is dense. I skimmed through hoping to see examples of the “aesthetics” with screenshots of old school installers (like the ones from Razor 1911, Class, Deviance etc) - it looks like these are scattered around the web, though. If anyone wants to relive some of the old chiptunes from these installers there’s https://archive.org/details/codex-installer-music-5-2018-03-...
- deepakhj
Crazy to find my old handle listed in the appendix. I was staff on a couple of the top-ranked FTP sites in the US and Europe at the time.
Seeing this sent me down a rabbit hole through the old Net Monkey Weekly Reports. I found interviews, arguments, and stories I had completely forgotten about. My memory of that period is pretty hazy now, but competing at that level was a lot of fun. I never really did it for the software.
I eventually had to quit so I could finish school, and unfortunately I lost touch with almost everyone.
[dee]
- phrotoma
Folks enjoying this book and discussion may also enjoy this miniseries which predates youtube. "The Scene" is a fictional dramatization about a warez release group told entirely through the perspective of group members by way of screencasts of their online interactions.
I recall thinking it was a cool and novel way to tell a story at the time it was released, but admittedly I haven't revisitted it in a couple decades so it may seem tame by todays standards.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scene_(miniseries)
Episode one: https://youtu.be/ImLy5mqj8WI
- dang
Discussed a bit at the time:
Warez: The Infrastructure and Aesthetics of Piracy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29633143 - Dec 2021 (13 comments)