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The warez scene is so fascinating

Audioboxer

Member
For the Dreamcast I read in a book.about Segas history, the use of GD ROMs rather than CD ROMs was their piracy protection.

Whatever their plan, it seemed to backfire a bit. Then again, the Dreamcast didn't live long anyway... eeeek.
 

pswii60

Member
Back in the Amiga days, the scene didn't just crack a game, they'd do a demo intro too with some awesome music to go with it.
 
The art and music (demos, intros, MODs) associated with the warez scene are still alive and well and known as the 'demoscene', but it doesn't have quite the same cultural relevance it used to. People are still doing cool stuff with intentionally limited resources, though.

Does the traditional warez scene still exist? It seems like that kind of culture mostly exists in media piracy groups and to some extent in fansub/scanslation groups, but there's much less personal style involved in what's basically just distribution.
 

Poppy

Member
they arent even physical goods, they are copies of digital data you fuckin lunatics stop comparing it to real atrocious crimes

no one is saying software piracy isnt technically a crime but holy shit
 

Breakage

Member
Maybe some of the stuff back in the early era was "fascinating". Nowadays my only real point of interest is seeing how tech whizzes somehow manage to crack/emulate some of the seriously expensive and lavish DRM that gets used. It's a pretty fascinating game of cat and mouse not to mention some amount of effort and skill must go into some of it. The notorious Sim City/EA debacle was hilarious. Some push back to ridiculous DRM is good, even if it comes from dubious places.

Or I guess it was "fascinating" how the Dreamcast just didn't seem to give a fuck and just played backups. I didn't own a Dreamcast till like a year ago, but was it ever explained why Sega didn't bother with any sort of protection?
I think this blog post provides a good explanation regarding the Dreamcast's disc security:

http://wololo.net/2012/11/12/sega-dreamcast-how-its-security-works-and-how-it-was-hacked/

Edit: just read the comments in that post and it seems there are some errors.
 

Audioboxer

Member
Wasn't their "encryption" just the data written in reverse? Or was that something else?

I honestly have no clue, I just know people were copying things onto CDs and the Dreamcasts were reading those CDs without any pesky soldered modchips.

I think this blog post provides a good explanation regarding the Dreamcast's disc security:

http://wololo.net/2012/11/12/sega-dreamcast-how-its-security-works-and-how-it-was-hacked/

Ahhh okay, cool. So people were essentially overburning or ripping games and resampling video/audio. Fascinating indeed! The dumping tricks too xD

The first method used an exploit found in the game Phantasy Star Online, basically, the method consisted on using the Dreamcast itself to read the GD-Rom and stream it through an ethernet cable connected to the computer.

The second method consisted on the typical disc swapping. It worked by introducing a CD filled with data on your computer, and swapping it with a GD-Rom without your computer knowing it. That way the PC thought there was data all the way to the end of the disc, due to it using the CD's TOC, instead of the newly swapped GD's TOC. This method produced a 1:1 copy of the disc.
 
Preservation of any media really. If it wasn't for scene groups there would be a shitload of music that would've been simply lost forever.

Not to mention games. It's common for official rereleases of retro games to use ROMs that were originally dumped and distributed by "pirates."

Software dev houses are historically bad at preserving source code and masters.
 

cyba89

Member
That's a factual statement. Copyright infringement is not theft. It's not. Period.

I mean, we can debate the greater issues around copyright infringement, that's cool, but that first post got the topic wrong straight from the get-go.

Semantics!

Whatever these thieves wanna call it to make them feel better about themselves.
 

Fularu

Banned
Those "thieves" brought a lot to the industry and tremendously helped make it better.

While I understand why some people may dislike the sharing aspect of it, without them large parts of our cultural heritage would have just vanished.

When a few weeks ago the french police closed down t411 some artists and journalists said it was the biggest loss in french culture to evwr happen due to the sheer volume of extremely rare (and otherwise lost) works beeing available on it.
 
T

Transhuman

Unconfirmed Member
Without piracy Neflix, Steam and Spotify might not exist and price gouging would be worse. You have benefitted from the existence of piracy.

You're welcome.
 

Breakage

Member
I honestly have no clue, I just know people were copying things onto CDs and the Dreamcasts were reading those CDs without any pesky soldered modchips.



Ahhh okay, cool. So people were essentially overburning or ripping games and resampling video/audio. Fascinating indeed! The dumping tricks too xD

It seems the chap who authored the post got a few things wrong in his post - especially the stuff regarding Phantasy Star Online. The comments below the post shed more light on this.
 

sangreal

Member
Why do people do this? What is the incentive to systematically and relentlessly upload every possible piece of media or software to the internet for free?
Information wants to be free, man!

In all seriousness... Aside from the obvious reward -- being able to download anything you want in return -- the processes within the scene were very gamified. It was almost like a sport. And of course there is the social aspect that people weren't getting from real life
 
it's for software preservation /s

In the case of Denuvo titles on PC, it really is. When those authentication servers go down and all the games that couldn't bother to patch it out after it was cracked, legitimate paying customers will be thanking the scene groups for cracking them.
 
Here's to warez for getting me through my poor as fuck teen years back in the early 2000s!

Also that chiptune music was amazing.
 

Chindogg

Member
There were a few articles written about guys who would get CDs from distributors and leak them to the net in the days of IRC and yeah some of those stories are kinda fascinating.

Seeing their group tags in games were always interesting back in the day of 0day stuff, of course most of that is dead now thanks to how easy torrents are to use.
 

captive

Joe Six-Pack: posting for the common man
Always pronounced it Juarez. Mind blown.


Also no mention of edonkey?

Anyway yea super illegal. But inwas always fascinated at how they cracked legit software.
 

border

Member
It was always a fun challenge trying to find really super obscure stuff. These days I'd probably be too wary about downloading anything containing an executable, and too stupid to burn my own discs.
 

Shredderi

Member
Semantics!

Whatever these thieves wanna call it to make them feel better about themselves.

image.php


But yeah, in the eyes of the law it's an important distinction to make. Morally, you can feel whatever you want about it of course. I actually saw the demoscene/wares scene as pretty fascinating as well when I was kid. I didn't have a PC before I turned 15 but I had a friend who's dad had their whole PC filled with all kinds of software and games etc. and I was always jealous.
 

Lan Dong Mik

And why would I want them?
I thought this dude was gonna be talking about that bad ass scene from Sicario when they first go into Juarez and he just spelled it wrong
 
Without piracy Neflix, Steam and Spotify might not exist and price gouging would be worse. You have benefitted from the existence of piracy.

You're welcome.

Pretty much. I don't see any of the modern content services either existing or being fairly priced if not for piracy.
 

RRockman

Banned
Man, that first page is weird. Since when is copyright infringement is the same as being a violent racist or petty theft? They are doing the wrong things but they are incredibly talented at what they do. I also think the camadrie the various groups have are neat too. I don't see anything wrong in admiring what they are good at if you know that what they are doing is wrong and you should never perpetrate like that yourself.

Sometimes you gotta respect the hustle.
 
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