Pirates of the Internet

black_death  (blackdeathx@gmail.com)

Yo ho ho and a bottle of caffeinated beverages!

We hear about them on the news: evil nerds that make those poor (((multi-billion dollar record companies and movie studios))) lose money.  But who are pirates really?

I'm sure that many people who read this magazine are pirates too, whether you distribute intellectual property or you simply download MP3s.  Whether you do or not, this article will be insightful.

I wrote this article because of an article on piracy from the Summer 2004 issue of 2600 that I remember, not because it inspired me but because it was so bad.

I was also inspired by how uninformed or just plain ignorant the guys who write for news shows are.  Hopefully, my article will shed light on something that few people, not even other hackers, know much about.

In this article, I will go into detail about how piracy works.  I know that a lot of you guys will know most of the terms but I will define them anyways for the newbies.

Music

This is probably the simplest as well as the most widespread form of piracy; it is also the one you are probably most familiar with.

The pirate extracts songs from a CD, which is called ripping them.  This can be done either from the official CD on the day of its release or in advance if the pirate works for the record company.

Then, the songs are converted to the MP3 audio format, most commonly at a bitrate of 128 kilobits per second, which makes files of relatively low quality.

Finally, these new files are put in the Shared Folder of the user's Peer-to-Peer (P2P) program.  That's it; the P2P program automatically shares the files with anyone who requests them, so the user doesn't have to worry about anything.

Each person who downloads a file also begins sharing it, so even more people can download the file and at faster speeds.

You may have heard on the news about people getting sued by the RIAA, which is an organization representing the four largest American record companies, and some of you might be worried about being sued, but here's my advice: don't worry; they don't have shit on you.

That's right: the way these guys "catch" you is by searching for a selected MP3 file of one of the artists they represent and then sending out letters to the households using all of the IP addresses that show up.  The same IP is usually shared by several different households even you don't factor in Wi-Fi and the fact that they can't prove who was using the computer.  (A robber could've broken in to use your high-speed connection because he has dial-up, downloaded music, and saved it to their iPod.)

If you're still worried, however, download a program called PeerGuardian.  It's free and it blocks anti-P2P companies' and government organizations' IPs from connecting to you.

Without going on a rant, I'd just like to point out that the record companies have actually made more money since P2P became big: record sales may be down, but internet sales are way up.  Also, they barely pay the musicians anything; if it wasn't for ASCAP and BMI giving the artists performance fees for radio play, covers, and the like, most musicians seriously would be dying of hunger.

Movies

If you live in Asia or a large city with a predominantly Asian area (a "Chinatown") in it, then you've probably seen people selling pirated movies.

Where do they get them from?  Most pirated DVD salesmen download the movies from Torrent sites like TorrentSpy and Mininova.  This is very easy to do, but the salesmen make money off the chumps who don't know how to do it by selling the movies for anywhere from $1 to $5 each.

The movies are usually in Video CD (VCD) format, which is like DVD but lower quality, which can fit on a CD-R, and which can be played on any DVD player.  But where those torrents come from is a more interesting story.

Usually the movie is captured by someone sitting in the movie theater with a camera.  This was once done very poorly, but now it's usually done with a tripod and an empty theater.  These are called "Cams" releases and usually come out the day of the movie's release, but they are also are usually of bad quality.

There is also another method called "Telesync" which is basically the same as Cams, except the audio comes through some direct input such as a headphone jack, rather than the camera's microphone.

They are also usually better quality than their Cams counterparts.  If a movie is very popular, especially among the the White male 14-30 demographic that most often downloads these files, then sometimes a DVD "Screener" will be released one or two weeks later.  These files, sometimes just called "Screeners," are DVD rips made from a DVDs of the movie that are given out only to certain people in the film industry but which then get leaked.

Regardless of how the movie was captured, the release group then converts the movie to an Xvid file, which is a high-quality video format, better than DVD, but which can mostly only be watched on computers and some DVD players, or alternately to VCD format as BIN/CUE disc image files which can be burnt to CD.  The files are then distributed as a torrent.

A torrent is a file containing information about which files to download from which BitTorrent trackers.

It basically works the same way as P2P programs, but instead of using Ares or LimeWire to search, you use a website.  The torrent files are found on torrent websites which either have their own tracker, like TorrentSpy does, or search multiple trackers, like isoHunt does.

These are public torrent sites; there are also private torrent sites which you can join by invitation only.  On private trackers, the quality of the file you download is usually better and the download usually goes faster, you also have to maintain a certain ratio of how much data you download to how much you upload, and you also have a lower selection of files, unless it's an enormous site such as Oink's Pink Palace.

Software, Games, and Other

This is the form of piracy most of you are unfamiliar with because it is the most complicated.

Don't get me wrong: it's not complicated; it just seems that way to the average person.  Software is usually distributed as a trial version of the software and a crack.

A crack is often a modified main executable of the program which bypasses the licensing system, though sometimes all you need a serial number or license key.  Games usually come as the full game ripped from the official CDs with the copy protection cracked, plus a serial number or a program that generates serial numbers.

Sometimes you'll also get a NoCD program, which is the same as a crack but instead of bypassing the licensing system, it bypasses the system that checks whether the game CD is inserted or not.  However, if the game came as CD-ROM disc image files, then you can use a Virtual CD program like DAEMON Tools to emulate an actual CD drive instead.

Cracks, key generators, NoCDs, and the like are made by people known as crackers.

The crackers use debuggers like OllyDbg and IDA Pro to disassemble the original program's assembly code.  They then modify this code with a hex editor such as HIEW or FlexHex.

Commercial software programs often try to prevent this by using software protection systems such as Armadillo, ASProtect, or WinLicense, but most crackers can get around these protection systems anyways.

There are sites out there that have databases of cracks and serials, but today these sites are so filled with adware and malware they're not even worth visiting unless you really know what you're doing.

Back in the day, warez used to actually be uploaded to one's own FTP or HTTP server or to a hacked server.  Now, however, almost everyone uploads to a site called RapidShare or to one of its many clones like Megaupload.

These sites were cool at first but they have wait times of up to a minute before you download can the file you want.  This can be bypassed, but a lot of the time it's unsuccessful.  Also, because the sites usually limit uploaded files to 100 MB each, warez downloads are usually in 100 MB RAR parts.  RAR files are compressed archives similar to ZIP files.  The download sites, however, have created something called premium accounts, where you pay monthly for an account that can download an unlimited amount of files without wait times and with prioritized speeds.  These premium accounts are often used almost like a currency on warez forums.

Warez forums are Internet forums where warez downloads are posted.  Most of these downloads, however, are taken from Direct Download (DDL) sites, which I'll talk about later.

Warez forums have sections for chatting just like other forums; they also have "VIP" sections, which you gain access to by having a certain amount of posts or, more commonly, by donating to the site.  These VIP sections supposedly contain rare, high-quality files, but most of the time these sections are disappointing and not worth your money or posting time.

Warez forums used to have very good potential, but now everyone uses DDL sites or torrent sites.  This is because all the big warez forums are currently owned by morons.

One example is a forum called WTalk: it started as a very good forum, not because of the admin, but because of the powerful and smart people he knew.  After a complicated series of events, the administrator banned the people who were the most integral to his forum, and slowly everyone else who was important to the community started to leave or get banned.

After a while, the only people left were so childish and stupid ("noobs") that they could relate to the admin.  Since everyone with double-digit IQs has left, the only people left to give the administrator advice are the ones as stupid as or stupider than him.  They suck up to him, so all his hair-brained ideas have resulted in even lower-quality members and even in more noobs; this is a process I call "Reverse Natural Selection."

On top of all, he has also secretly kept a log of his members' passwords, which are supposed to be encrypted, and he's used his members' donations for the site to buy new MacBooks, iPods, and so on.  This stupidity and corruption is common among many warez forum admins, though not usually to this degree.

Sorry for my little rant.

Anyways, back on topic: DDL sites are websites where the links to downloads are submitted and then displayed as thousand-page lists of software titles.  They also, of course, have a search bar.  The biggest DDL sites are Katz and PhazeDDL.

The sites that submit their links are either actual websites or warez forums, but, either way, they both use RapidShare most of the time.  Also, if you search for a file on a DDL site, most results you get will be redundant: the same RapidShare link over and over, just with different people getting ad revenue or members.

Conclusion

Warez has come a long way from the "Don't copy that floppy" era, to the rise and fall of Napster and Kazaa, to torrents, and to people selling something that is supposed to be free.

Who knows what the future holds?

Maybe one day you'll be able to download physical objects, but what I know for certain is that, right now, warez is at a high point for quantity and low point for quality.

It will take something big to fix it.  I hope you enjoyed my article and learned something from it.  I hope to write for 2600 again.

About Me:  I have been an active member in the warez community for several years now and sometimes I contribute to the Wikipedia article on warez.  I have my own warez forum.  It's small, but with it, I'm trying to battle the flaws of other warez forums I mentioned earlier in the article.  You can visit it at www.kronikfilez.com