Yet another Hacker News

Warez: The Infrastructure and Aesthetics of Piracy (2021)

153 points succinct_ideas 1 day ago 55 comments

x______________ 1 day ago | parent

Get ready, a 300 page pdf, not just your average run of the mill story. Marked for later...

milchek 1 day ago | parent

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-...

9dev 10 hours ago | parent

Razor 1911! Now here’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time, but teenage me was very grateful to.

The .nfo files alone, distributed with most releases, carrying the most elaborate of ASCII art. I distinctly remember the aesthetics you mention.

nikanj 10 hours ago | parent

Remember realizing it’s 0x777, one better than 666?

mmanfrin 8 hours ago | parent

Probably more a reference to total file permissions.

bitwize 6 hours ago | parent

That's 777 octal tho

5-0 2 hours ago | parent

I believe this was the case, as there was a lot of 666 going around at the time.

th1234987 8 hours ago | parent

> The .nfo files alone, distributed with most releases, carrying the most elaborate of ASCII art. I distinctly remember the aesthetics you mention.

See their 40 year retrospective demo for a lot more of that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dybkLM-1eQo :)

bitwize 7 hours ago | parent

I still refer to 1:37 pm (13:37) as "l33t o'clock" and 7:11 pm (19:11) as "Razor o'clock". They seem to come up remarkably often when I glance at the time, like 11:11 for normies, but I think all of these are some sort of pareidolic/selection-bias effect wherein your brain is just more likely to remember/notice times that it considers significant.

5-0 2 hours ago | parent

If you ever need to scratch that ASCII art itch: https://asciiarena.se/

suburban_strike 6 hours ago | parent

Some of the chiptune musicians are still active. Dubmood made it onto the Hotline Miami (2012) soundtrack.

gravitronic 5 hours ago | parent

Be sure to check out keygen music, still updated

https://keygenmusic.tk/

ChrisArchitect 16 hours ago | parent

Book site with info and other links: https://punctumbooks.com/catalog/10.53288/0339.1.00

ckozlowski 7 hours ago | parent

Thanks!

dang 13 hours ago | parent

Discussed a bit at the time:

Warez: The Infrastructure and Aesthetics of Piracy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29633143 - Dec 2021 (13 comments)

thebeardisred 12 hours ago | parent

I own the physical book. I really wanted to like it but I found the style of prose grating and the overuse of "ibid" in the citations peeving.

MPSimmons 12 hours ago | parent

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.

nickdothutton 12 hours ago | parent

ftp.uu.net was a bit of a wild west for a while before it was eventually pulled.

spjt 11 hours ago | parent

I bought the print edition, which is a bit ironic.

simmons 10 hours ago | parent

I'm always a little surprised when I don't see mentions of FSP [1] in works like this. For a short time, it seemed to be the warez transfer means of choice for those looking to fly under the radar and avoid detection. (So I'm told.) But maybe it wasn't much more than a footnote in the grand scheme of things.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Service_Protocol

nikanj 10 hours ago | parent

I always thought FXP was a much more common tool, as you could move releases between beefy servers without having to download them first https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_eXchange_Protocol

lm411 8 hours ago | parent

I was in a small courier group way back when. FXP was definitely common. We could copy a lot of software in a small amount of time.

bitwize 7 hours ago | parent

I'm old enough to remember when IRC DCC fservs were a popular distribution channel.

ozozozd 4 hours ago | parent

Phrozen Crew and UCF on Efnet, right?

slyall 5 hours ago | parent

My impression was that FSP was when you had an account on a Unix server at a University and wanted to slowly move files without attracting attention

When people had their own internet connected machine other protocols were much better choices.

ryandrake 9 hours ago | parent

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...

havaloc 8 hours ago | parent

Being of that age, hearing about and then using ethernet in the dorms was sort of like discovering Oz after living in Kansas. I had so many questions! How did they manage all that traffic? It was like having a firehose after using an eye dropper all your life.

gct 6 hours ago | parent

Ahhh mIRC, jolt cola and an EDU connection at 3AM...

sbseitz 8 minutes ago | parent

The real OGs did not use mIRC.

shevy-java 6 hours ago | parent

Indeed. I remember that back on my old win-days.

I switched to linux in 2004 or so. All those old use cases kind of vanished or changed. Perhaps the subset of software is more limited on linux, since Microsoft also builds - and exploits - a platform for commercial success, but I see more and more linux-specific applications too, typically using qt5 or qt6. Which is interesting considering linux does not have a huge share here. I guess there does exist some market value here.

I just can not really see myself using or needing "warez" on linux - the use cases are sooooo different now. For multimedia there are very few use cases not covered by ffmpeg and mpv. The only thing I'd like is something like avisynth, but more like a domain specific language that is even shorter. I remember back in early 2004 or late 2003 I was still writing avisynth scripts to modify video data on windows. Linux pipes never really went into an object-oriented approach and view onto data.

stevekemp 53 minutes ago | parent

> I just can not really see myself using or needing "warez" on linux

I remember switching to Linux around 94 and at the time one of the things that annoyed me was that there was very little commercial software to patch registration checks out of!

There were a couple of image-viewers, and similar things, but I fell out of the habit of decompiling random binaries, and stopped keeping up with the newere techqniques for a good few years. My reversing skills came back, later, but swithching to Linux where everything was "free" and source was mostly available really did change a lot of my computer-related hobbies.

jibal 4 hours ago | parent

You omitted 300, 1200, and 2400, youngster. And the joys of xmodem, ymodem, and zmodem.

darkwater 1 hour ago | parent

Aaah, that's why it was called zmodem!

fractal618 8 hours ago | parent

I remember and miss the golden days. Although it was probably glitter and not actually gold. Still, it was exciting. 3v3n 4 teh sc1pt kidd14s sti77 learnin’ ta sh4ve.

havaloc 7 hours ago | parent

Author authorized epub available here: https://github.com/gfscott/warez-the-infrastructure-and-aest...

lioeters 6 hours ago | parent

Direct link to the file: https://github.com/gfscott/warez-the-infrastructure-and-aest... (EPUB)

lm411 6 hours ago | parent

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.

shevy-java 6 hours ago | parent

The question is whether you find it ok that the FBI comes sniffing after you. Personally I don't find it ok at all. I don't see any of that as a crime either. The legislation is clearly written by corporations and lobbyists acting as lawyers. That's another reason why I think open source is preferrable - that way they are replaced indirectly by not depending on them in the first place, meaning, as a trade-off towards how the society is currently structured. Hopefully it will become more sane again in the future. Back then, though, say in the 1990s or early 2000s, the "vibe" of warez also was "look how great ILLEGAL can be".

enneff 4 hours ago | parent

You don’t think it should be illegal to hack a telecom network and take control of it?

ExoticPearTree 2 hours ago | parent

Nope. It means the people running it did not do a good job configuring and securing it.

shitloadofbooks 1 hour ago | parent

So if you steal something it means the owner didn’t do a good job securing it and if you murder someone they didn’t do a good job protecting themselves?

What an absurd world view.

rapidaneurism 1 hour ago | parent

And most people do not have guards and dogs walking around the perimeter, but we still blame the burglars for breaking in their houses.

darkwater 1 hour ago | parent

This is the epitome of the "blame the victim" culture.

enneff 1 hour ago | parent

Maybe you should think through the consequences of living in a society where anything a person can do is allowed lmao

lukan 57 minutes ago | parent

So you would be fine with someone clearing out your house, while you were away?

There is no door, that cannot be opened with enough effort. Part of what stops people trying, is the fear of consequences.

jbrooks84 6 hours ago | parent

Good times

shevy-java 6 hours ago | parent

I feel that the name "Piracy" or "Pirate" no longer applies.

I call them more like Freedom Fighters. Like Mel Gibson in the movie Braveheart.

_superposition_ 5 hours ago | parent

Warez irc channels were the best social media ever

vaylian 1 hour ago | parent

IRC is not social media. But otherwise agree.

deepakhj 5 hours ago | parent

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]

swozey 4 hours ago | parent

Was thinking the other day how I hadn't heard/seen the word 'warez' in a LONG time. Can't believe the stuff I used to download. Want sims 2? Here's a sketch russian site with 900 .rar files that you hope won't infect your parents pc.. Oops, looks like files 35-90 are corrupt or missing.

I've seen that people (probably reddit teens) still install those "Windows Black Version" warezed Windows that come full of crap. I wonder how fruitful those have been for getting peoples data/money.

Teen me was never stupid enough to install a not only cracked but probably malware/virus packed OS thankfully.

Windows XP BlacK! < Pirateshipskull_wallpaper.png >

The big Sims cracker I believe is still that womans name, ladyfit or something? I forget. I tried to dig into who/what that was a decade ago out of curiosity if she/they were someone whose software you would want to install and could find nothing, but every person playing a cracked version uses it..

imthias404 3 hours ago | parent

Not from your era, never experienced such a time, but pit of curiosity does this ladyfit have something to do with current fitgirl right now?

swozey 2 hours ago | parent

fitgirl is who I meant, thanks. I forgot about that until this week when that voices38 game cracker was targeted by Denuvo for cracking it. I saw some reddit posts pop up from a fitgirl subreddit talking about it in solidarity. I remember fitgirl being the sims packer from a decade or more ago.

charcircuit 3 hours ago | parent

I personally don't understand how the government hasn't solved taking down piracy sites yet.

Piracy sites are easy to track and obviously break the law. US ISPs should easily be able to null route their IP and CDNs should be able to easily block the domain from being served.

ExoticPearTree 2 hours ago | parent

I grew up in a country where every kind of software was availbale on a CD - usually a collection of whatever could fit on a CD. And paying for software was a considered a blasphemy.

My first software purchase was I think after 2015, and it still felt weird compared to the usual process of finding a keygen somewhere.