warez

 

"Warez" refers primarily to virtual copyrighted material traded in violation of copyright law. The term generally refers to illegal releases by organized groups, as opposed to peer-to-peer file sharing between friends or large groups of people with similar interest using a darknet. It usually does not refer to commercial for-profit software counterfeiting. This term was initially coined by members of the various computer underground circles, but has since become commonplace among Internet users and the media.

Etymology

The word "warez" was coined to indicate more than one piece of pirated software, as "software" is a non-count noun and users found it natural to use a count noun to differentiate between one "ware" (one piece of software) and multiple "warez" (multiple pieces of software). Due to the relatively large amounts of time needed to transfer large files over slow telephone modems and bulletin board systems (BBSes), pirates would typically ask for one-for-one trades from other pirates. Hence, software pirates adopted a merchant-like attitude with their software collection(s) and the term "wares" was apt.

Warez is used most commonly as a noun: "My neighbor downloaded 10 gigabytes of warez yesterday"; but has also been used as a verb: "The new Windows was warezed a month before the company officially released it". The collection of warez groups is referred to globally as the "warez scene" or more ambiguously "The Scene".

History of warez

Product piracy

Piracy in its current form began during the industrial revolution in the 19th century. Industrial textile production was one of the important factors in economic growth. Plans for weaving machines were patented and the British government applied strict restrictions on exports of the technology. ^[1]

At the time, patent law in the United States limited all patents to US citizens only and, protected by this act, several businessmen such as Francis Cabot Lowell began manufacturing without paying any compensation to the patent holders in Britain. Francis Cabot Lowell's mill was based on technology patented by Edmund Cartwright. ^[2] Such acts were condoned by the US government for over a century until the passing of the International Copyright Act.

During the 1980s, and continuing into the 2000s, some of the most famous products targeted were Lacoste shirts. [1] This type of product counterfeiting was and still is done by organized crime groups often based in Eastern or Asian countries such as China, Thailand,and Russia^{[citation needed]}. These groups illegally produce millions of counterfeit copies of clothing, electronics, microchips, music CDs, VHS & DVD movies, and software applications.

While most copies of pirate software are manufactured in Asian factories, their distribution often begins in first-world nations such as the United States and Western European countries, where the largest international publishers of proprietary software are located^{[citation needed]}. These pirate copies are regularly sold on city streets throughout most of South America, Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. In some countries they are sold at retail price which can be worth several billion dollars annually. While the selling of pirate copies is less common in Western nations, its popularity is growing. In Western nations, pirate products are usually sold in specific areas, such as Chinatown in New York^{[citation needed]} and the Pacific Mall in suburban Toronto. Unlike Asian countries where pirate goods can even be sold in retailers, this kind of distribution is relatively rare in Western nations.

Warez distribution

Warez is often distributed by the source (the cracker or cracking crew), it is then compiled and split into .rar or .zip files for compression. An nfo or file_id.diz is often made to promote who created the release. The release is then transferred to a courier or group of couriers who upload it to private FTP servers known as topsites. It is then either leeched (downloaded) by users of the FTP server and spread to IRC channels, sharing sites and to p2p protocols like BitTorrent. From there, it can be downloaded from millions of users all over the world. Often, one release is duplicated, renamed, then re-uploaded to different sites so that eventually, it can become impossible to trace the original file. In the early 1990's, warez was often traded on cassette tapes with different groups, and it was published on bulletin boards that have a warez section.

Rise of software piracy

Software piracy has been an issue from the day the first commercial software program hit store shelves. Whether the medium was cassette tape or floppy disk, software pirates found a way to duplicate the software and spread it amongst their friends. Thriving pirate communities were built around the Apple II, Commodore 64, the Atari 400 and Atari 800 line, the ZX Spectrum, the Amiga, the Atari ST among other personal computers. Entire networks of BBSes sprang up to traffic illegal software from one user to the next. Machines like the Amiga and the Commodore 64 had an international pirate network; software not available on one continent would eventually make its way to every region through the pirate network via the bulletin board systems.

It was also quite common in the 1980s to use physical floppy disks and the postal service for spreading software, in an activity known as mail trading. Particularly widespread in continental Europe, mail trading was even used by many of the leading cracker groups as their primary channel of interaction. Software piracy via mail trading was also the most relevant means for many computer hobbyists in the Eastern bloc countries to receive new Western software for their computers.

Copy protection schemes for the early systems were designed to defeat the casual pirate, as "crackers" would typically release a pirated game to the pirate "community" the day they were earmarked for market.

A famous event in the history of software piracy policy was an open letter written by Bill Gates of Microsoft, dated February 3, 1976, in which he argued that the quality of available software would increase if software piracy was less prevalent. However, until the early 1990s, software piracy was not yet considered a serious problem by most people. In 1992, the Software Publishers Association began to battle against software piracy, with its promotional video "Don't Copy That Floppy". It and the Business Software Alliance have remained the most active anti-piracy organizations worldwide, although to compensate for extensive growth in recent years, they have gained the assistance of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), as well as American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) and Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI).

Today most warez files are known as torrent files. Some of the most popular software companies that are being targeted are Adobe, Microsoft, Nero, Apple, Dreamworks, and Autodesk to name a few. It is estimated that in 2006 alone these company's have lost over 78 billion dollars because of piracy. It is very easy to download warez software... clients can include bitlord, bittorrent, bitcomet, azurea, and many more. To reduce the spread of pirating, some companies have hired people to release "fake" torrents, which look real and are meant to be downloaded, but while downloading the individual does not realize that the company that owns the software has received his ip. They will then contact his/her ISP, and further legal action may be taken from the company/ISP

Causes which have accelerated its growth

In the late 1990s, computers became more popular. This was attributed to Microsoft and the release of Windows 95, which made using an IBM PC compatible computer much easier. Windows 95 became so popular that in developed countries nearly every middle-class household had at least one computer^{[citation needed]}. Similar to televisions and telephones, computers became a necessity to every person in the information age. As the use of computers increased, so had software and cyber crimes.

In the mid-1990s, the average Internet user was still on dial-up, with average speed ranging between 28.8 and 33.6 kbit/s (with a maximum speed of 56 kbit/s becoming possible in early 1999 with the advent of V.90). If one wished to download a piece of software, which could run about 200 MB, the download time could be longer than one day, depending on network traffic, the Internet Service Provider, and the server. Around 1997, broadband began to gain popularity due to its greatly increased network speeds. As "large-sized file transfer" problems became less severe, warez became more widespread and began to affect large software files like animations and movies.

In the past, files were distributed by point-to-point technology: with a central uploader distributing files to downloaders. With these systems, a large number of downloaders for a popular file uses an increasingly larger amount of bandwidth. If there are too many downloads, the server can become unavailable. The opposite is true for peer-to-peer networking; the more downloaders the faster the file distribution is. With swarming technology as implemented in file sharing systems like eDonkey2000 or BitTorrent, downloaders help the uploader by picking up some of its uploading responsibilities. In addition many sites with links to Rapidshare, Megaupload and other sites where you can upload files attribute to the growing amount of warez.

Types of warez

There is generally a distinction made between different sub-types of warez:

• Apps / Appz - Applications: Generally a retail version of a software package.
• Cracks / Crackz - Cracked applications: A modified executable or more (usually one) and/or a library (usually one) or more and/or a patch designed to turn a trial version of a software package into the full version and/or bypass anti-piracy protections.
• Games / Gamez - Games: This scene concentrates on both computer based games, and video game consoles, though the latter are more often referred to as ISOs and ROMs.
• Moviez - Movies: Pirated movies generally released while still in theaters or from CDs/DVDs/HD-DVDs prior to the actual retail date.
• NoCD/NoDVD/FixedExe - A file modification that allows an installed program to be run without inserting the CD or DVD into the drive.
• TV-Rips - Television programs: Television shows generally released within a few hours after airing, with all commercials edited out. DVD Rips of television series fall under this sub-type.
• mp3 - MP3 audio: Pirated albums, singles, or other audio format usually obained by ripping a CD or a radio broadcast and released in the compressed MP3 audio format.
• E-Bookz/ebooks/e-books - Books: These include pirated ebooks, scanned books, scanned comics, cartoons etc.
• Scriptz - Scripts: These include pirated scripts coded by companies in PHP, ASP, and other languages. (such as vbulletin, invision power board, etc)
• Templates - Templates: These include pirated website templates coded by companies.
• DOX - Computer game add-ons: These include nocds, cracks, trainers, cheat codes etc.
• 0-Day Warez (pronounced as zero day warez sometimes as "O days") - This refers to a crack which has been released on the same day as the original.
• MVids (Music videos) - Often ripped from TV, HDTV and DVD. Distributed in XViD format.

Movie piracy

Main article: Pirated movie release types

Movie piracy was looked upon as impossible by the major studios. When dial-up was common in early and mid 1990s, movies distributed on the Internet tended to be small. The techniques that were usually used to make them small were to use compression software and lower the video quality. At that time, the largest piracy threat was software.

However, along with the rise in broadband internet connections beginning around 1998, higher quality movies began to see widespread distribution – with the release of DeCSS, ISO images copied directly from the original DVDs were slowly becoming a feasible distribution method. Today, movie sharing has become so common that it has caused major concern amongst movie studios and their representative organizations. Because of this the MPAA is often running campaigns during movie trailers where it tries to discourage people from copying material without permission. Unlike the music industry, which has had online music stores available for several years, the movie industry has only moved to online distribution in 2006 with the launch of Amazon Unbox

Forms of pirated film releases
Cam • VHS-Rip • Telesync (TS) • Telecine (TC) • Workprint (WP) • R5 • Screener (SCR) • DVD-Rip • DVDR Image • HDTV-Rip

Distribution of warez

Distribution methods

There are several methods in which warez material could be distributed. The methods include, but are not limited to: Mail, Modem (Modem), File Transfer Protocol (FTP) and File eXchange Protocol (FXP), Usenet, Xabi Direct Client Connection (XDCC, read Direct Client-to-Client (IRC / Direct Client-to-Client (DCC))), Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), Peer-to-peer (P2P) clients such as eMule (ED2K) Limewire, Ares (Gnutella) and BitTorrent (BT), and of course the unstoppable Sneakernet. Forums are a modern community method to distribute warez as well.

File formats of warez

For more specific information see Standard (warez)

A CD software release can contain up to 737 megabytes of data, which presented challenges when sending over the Internet, particularly in the late 1990s when broadband was unavailable to most home consumers. These challenges apply to an even greater extent for a single-layer DVD release, which can contain up to 4.7 GB of data. The warez scene made it standard practice to split releases up into many separate pieces, called disks, using several file compression formats: (historical TAR, LZH, ACE, UHA, ARJ), ZIP and most commonly RAR. The original purpose of these "disks" was so that each .rar file could fit on a single 1.44 MB 3 1/2 inch floppy disk. With the growing size of games, this is no longer feasible, as hundreds of disks would need to be used. Most groups will now release a title with disks sized 15,000,000 bytes (14,3 megabytes) or 50,000,000 bytes (47,7 megabytes) in bigger release.

This method has many advantages over sending a single large file:

• The two-layer compression could sometimes achieve almost a tenfold improvement over the original DVD/CD image. The overall file size is cut down and lessens the transfer time and bandwidth required.
• If there is a problem during the file transfer and data was corrupted, it is only necessary to resend the few corrupted RAR files instead of resending the entire large file.
• This method also creates the facility of downloading from many sources.

With the rise of modern peer-to-peer programs, which automatically break files up for partial downloads, compression via RAR, ZIP, and KGB is still commonplace but the breaking up of files is less so.

Releases of software titles often come in two forms. The full form is a full version of a game or application, generally released as CD or DVD-writable disk images (BIN or ISO files). A rip is a cut-down version of the title in which additions included on the legitimate DVD/CD (generally Portable Document Format (PDF) manuals, help files, tutorials, and audio/video media) are omitted. In a game rip, generally all game video is removed, and the audio is compressed to MP3 or Vorbis, which must then be decoded to its original form before playing. These rips are very rare today, as most modern broadband connections can easily handle the full files, and the audio is usually already compressed by the original producer in some fashion. A nuke is stand-alone version of a game or application, in which the installer has been removed or replaced and the program is modified to execute without installation into a particular directory.

Motivations and arguments

Software Pirates generally exploit the international nature of the copyright issue to avoid law enforcement in specific countries.

The production and/or distribution of warez is illegal in most countries. However, it is typically overlooked in poorer third world countries with weak or non-existent IP protection. Additionally, some first world countries have loopholes in legislation that allow the warez scene to continue to operate in a limited fashion.

For arguments, see List of pro and anti-warez arguments

Legality

Warez is often a form of copyright infringement punishable as either a civil wrong or a crime. The laws and their application to warez activities may vary greatly from country to country. Generally, however, there are four elements of criminal copyright infringement: the existence of a valid copyright, that copyright was infringed, the infringement was wilful and the infringement was either for commercial gain or substantial (a level often set by statute). Often public sites such as pages hosting torrent files claim that they are not breaking any laws because they are not offering the actual data, but only link to other places or peers which contain the infringing material.

Depending on the country, in some cases, software piracy might become legal and encouraged. As a dispute between Iran and USA over membership in WTO, and subsequent blocking of Iran's attempts at full-membership in the organization by the USA, has led Iran to encourage US software piracy. Subsequently, there has been a surge in Iranian "warez" and "crackz" websites, as unlike other countries, the Iranian laws do not forbid hosting them inside Iran. See: Iran and copyright issues

For more information, see article about copyright infringement

Terminology

Warez (intended to be pronounced like the word wares [weə(ɹ)z] but sometimes incorrectly like the English pronunciation of Juárez [wɑɹɛz]) is a derivative of the plural form of "software".

Piracy like all other words has different shades of meaning. Some denotative, others connotative, some implying social acceptability, others pejorative. Whoever controls access to the discourse is able to pick the words with meanings that frame the reader's response. While the term 'piracy' is commonly used to describe a significant range of activities, most of which are unlawful, the relatively neutral meaning in this context is "...mak[ing] use of or reproduc[ing] the work of another without authorization" ^[3]. Some groups (including the Free Software Foundation) object to the use of this and other words such as "theft" because they represent a partisan attempt to create a prejudice that is used to gain political ground. "Publishers often refer to prohibited copying as "piracy." In this way, they imply that illegal copying is ethically equivalent to attacking ships on the high seas, kidnapping and murdering the people on them" (FSF). The FSF advocate the use of terms like "prohibited copying" or "unauthorized copying", or "sharing information with your neighbor."

On the other hand, many self-proclaimed "software pirates" take pride in the term, thinking of the romanticized Hollywood portrayal of pirates and sometimes jokingly using "pirate talk" in their conversations. Although the use of this term is controversial, it is embraced by some groups such as Pirates With Attitude.

DDL Sites or better Direct Download Sites are sites where warez is submitted. It indexes the warez & gives links to the pages where the download links are available. These often contain massive advertisement and may contain spyware and trojans. They often just infinitely redirect users to other sites.

See also

• Software copyright
• Copyright infringement of software
• Crack introduction
• Piracy
• List of warez groups
• .nfo - information on the text file that is almost always included in warez releases.
• Grey hat - includes details on the anti-piracy.se case, allegedly linking Swedish anti-piracy organisation and Swedish authorities to criminal actions.
• Leet

Notes

1. ^ Textile infringments
2. ^ Cartwright patent
3. ^ The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition "Pirate".

References

• 2600 A Guide to Piracy – An article on the warez scene (ASCII plaintext and image scans from 2600: The Hacker Quarterly)
• "The Shadow Internet" – An article about modern day warez "top sites" at Wired News.
• The Darknet and the Future of Content Distribution
• BSA - Global Piracy Study - 2005 (PDF)
• BSA - Global Piracy Study - 2004 (PDF)
• Ordered Misbehavior – The Structuring of an Illegal Endeavor by Alf Rehn. A study of the illegal subculture known as the "warez scene". (PDF)

External links

• Piracy Textfiles – A historical collection of documents released by warez-related individuals.
• Warez Trading and Criminal Copyright Infringement – An article on warez trading and the law, including a recap of US prosecutions under the No Electronic Theft Act.
• A Guide To Internet Piracy Insider report about "the warez scene"
• Seminar paper on Warez - 1999
• DDL Distribution – A current example page of a DDL Site Submit.
• Warez Distribution – A current example page of a warez site.

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