The Scene

The Scene

The Scene is a term used to refer to a collection of communities of pirate networks that obtain and copy new movies, music, and games, often before their public release, and distribute them throughout the Internet (and previously through BBSes). Each specific subsection within The Scene has its own community and rules governing releases, and are made up of many smaller groups. These communities are referred to as scenes as well, for example the MP3 Scene, the DVDR Scene, etc. Groups gather in private IRC channels where they can easily coordinate with other members to “pre” and distribute releases. EFNet, a popular IRC network, is where most scene activity takes place today, although DALnet was also once used. This has been the case for ten years.

History

The Scene started emerging in 1980s on privately run BBS systems. The first BBSes were located in the USA, but similar boards started appearing in the UK, Australia and Europe. The BBSes advertised their dial-in numbers openly in group nfo’s or semi-hidden, so that anyone interested had to use a war dialer to actually find the real number of the BBS box. The BBS systems typically hosted several megabytes of material. The best boards had multiple phone lines and up to one hundred megabytes of storage space, which was very expensive at the time. Releases were mostly games and later applications.

The Scene didn’t work with a fixed ruleset, they assumed that end-users would know what they were getting either based on the release name or nfo.

Talented coders who cracked games often included a 4 or 64 kilobytes long cracktro to express their skills as a coder, artist or a musician.

The demoscene grew especially strong in Scandinavia, where annual gatherings are hosted even today. Warez distribution played only a minor role during the modem/BBS era since the transfer speeds were extremely slow — though average file sizes for games and applications were considerably smaller.

On December 11, 2001, Operation Buccaneer occurred and changed the scene drastically. Law enforcement agencies from six countries arrested 62 people suspected of software piracy. In the United States alone, 130 computers, holding an average of one terabyte of data apiece, were seized. After these raids occurred, piracy groups congregating on EFNet began guarding their channels by requiring a password, or “key,” for entry. They also put their channels in “secret” mode, effectively making them invisible to anybody that is not inside them. People operating servers holding pirated data began taking security much more seriously. Almost overnight, registered users were required to log in from a specific ip address. Similar raids have followed since Operation Buccaneer, and paranoia has gripped the scene as a result.

Subsections

ArtScene

The part of The Scene community that specializes in the creation of digital graphical art in text format. This has evolved into a separate community because it requires skill in both the area of utilizing the text as well as graphics design. This means there is not a very big crossover between people who are good Scene programmers and people who are good ArtScene artists. Yet ArtScene art was very popular on The Scene due to the point that text viewers were and are the most universal content displaying tools, perfect as a promotion tool.

MP3 Scene

MP3 releases began appearing in the mid-90s. By 1999, MP3 groups had implemented a formal set of rules and guidelines for the ripping and packaging of MP3 releases. Releases were required to come from a CDDA source, be encoded at 160 kbit/s, have proper filenames and directory structure, and include a playlist, an SFV file and an NFO file. In recent years this rule has been amended, allowing the source to be from DVD (including DVD-A) or VHS, live recording, vinyl, or tape, and stipulating that all MP3 files sourced from an optical disc must be encoded with LAME 3.90.3 or 3.97, using the V2 –vbr-new variable bitrate setting. For all other sources, The minimum bitrate allowed is 192kbps. In the case of non-native 44.1KHz, all audio must be downsampled from 48 to 44.1. In 2004, a rule was added that all non-retail releases be tagged as bootleg.

Demoscene

The part of The Scene community that specializes in the creation of so-called Demos. These are computer programs which bundle together sophisticated code which produces esthetic art in the form of animated graphics with music. The idea is to display programming and artistic skill, thus Demos are fascinating flashy animations with trancy music all coded up with as little code and data as possible. Examples are so numerous and ubiquitous sets that pull anyone here would be superfluous.

The Demoscene further branches into new and old:

* The old branch specializing in the production of art code for older platforms(CPM and DOS), where the processing power and space capacity are the biggest problems and require the biggest skill investment.
* The new branch specializing in the production of art code for newer platforms, where the challenge lies less in overcoming processing and capacity limitations, but but rather making the animation look and sound as spectacular as possible.

Crackers and reverse engineers

The part of The Scene community that specializes in the creation of software known as cracks and keygens. There is a large amount of crossover between the two communities as the skills required are pretty much the same. The point that software is inherently very complicated once finished is what makes cracking and reverse engineering such an attraction: it’s a challenge, which requires a lot of skill to do. This made cracking and reverse engineering the core element of The Scene since the beginning.

Warez scene

The part of The Scene community that specializes in the underground distribution of warez software. There is a certain amount of crossover between the cracking and reverse engineering community and this one, as the former cannot operate without the latter. The Warez Scene has been with the Scene from the very beginning, it however no longer matches the category of being technologically sophisticated to implement, thus it generally receives less respect than the other aspects

Distribution

Members involved in the scene are generally well-organized in their behavior and cautious with their identity. They maintain a private network of FTP sites called topsites that get new releases first. Releases are distributed from topsites down to smaller and smaller sites, and eventually may find their way onto peer-to-peer networks.

Users who distribute releases are called couriers and must earn credits by uploading files from other topsites. Credits, usually counted in megabytes, allow a user to download files. For example, many sites allow a user to download 3 megabytes for every megabyte uploaded. A credit balance is persisted with each user’s account.

Releases containing problems (for example, poor quality, duplicates, etc.) are nuked; a permanent mark is placed on a release, and the user responsible for uploading it is fined credits. It should be noted that competition amongst courier and release groups is the primary driving force behind the distribution of releases.