The Scene - the real underground of the Internet

We all used to think that everything can be found on the Internet. “Where to read news? - Go to lenta.ru "," Where to get the program for text recognition? “Ah, you need a Finereader, merge from Ineta”, “Where can I get a fresh film?” - Register in torrents and download. Being in the thick of the network, none of us no longer think about where it all comes from. In fact, why is the freshly erupted game already available on the Internet and works without an installation disc, although the developers have protected their product with the latest version of StarForce ? How do they sell a DVD on the top crust, if the film is just released in the USA today? All this is shrouded in mystery for the average man in the street, and the abstract word “piracy” has become common in the media.

Who is in charge of this black kingdom and why have world corporations not destroyed the stronghold of anarchy in the bud? Meanwhile, only a few know that people from under whose hands crack'i go to the latest games (and the very images of the games themselves), recording fresh films and music, are not doing this at all for money. They call themselves Stage , one of the most closed and secreted online communities, a real underground of the Internet. And they have a very remote attitude to the current "pirates", moreover, they despise them and are branded with the last words. Because The scene exists mostly on the enthusiasm of the community members and the respect of its members for each other.

From where
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At the dawn of the development of the Internet, the Scene was one of the many “underground” interest communities. But in the era of mass adoption of information technologies in the lives of ordinary people, it has, to the surprise of itself, become a factor affecting the lives of millions of people, transcontinental corporations, and even entire states. The economy of many countries, such as, for example, Russia and China, is informationally literally built on the “production” of the Scene, namely hacked software from Microsoft, Autodesk, Adobe and other industry giants. Moreover, some believe that the companies mentioned put a high percentage of the distribution of pirated versions of their products at the heart of building a business in third world countries. Here, Microsoft's example is indicative, which, again, according to some market participants, puts developing economies on their products, in order to effectively sell their own licensed version to them.

But back to the stage itself. What is she like? And what motivates dozens of people from all over the world to gather in secret underground groups (so-called release groups ) to participate in the Scene's activities, risking their own ass every day, and at their own expense? Life in the modern society of the golden billion often leads a person to a state where he has already tried a lot in life and entertainment with a small amount of risk does not entice him. By participating in the Scene, he can demonstrate his talents (members of the IRL release groups are often employees of large IT companies, software vendors and media carriers) to the same professionals as he, having earned so-called respect for yourself and your group.



What?

Like any highly organized community, the Scene has its own “rules” - the way the rest of the Stage assesses the activities of a particular release group and its members. Because The scene is mainly focused on releasing illegal or hacked copies of software or various multimedia data, then the activity code mainly regulates the list of parameters applicable to the releases themselves. Examples of such requirements can be found here - www.aboutthescene.com/thescene/scenerules.html .
It should be noted that on the Stage as such, there is no centralization of activity. If a group, in the opinion of the majority, violates the generally accepted rules, its releases can be considered nuked , but in the worst case, the group can be completely banned from Scene.

The main accompanying product for any release of a scene is an NFO-file that contains release specifications in accordance with the requirements of the scene, and often instructions for use / installation (if it is a release of a game or other software product). Distinctive characteristics of NFO-files of top release groups are ASCII-art , demonstrating the symbols of the group, a list of its members, previous releases, and an invitation to participate in its activities with a contact address. The name of the release file itself often also contains a number of "tags", denoting the specification and format of the release. The list of tags and their interpretation can be seen here - www.aboutthescene.com/releases/tags.html

Having become closely acquainted with the activities of the scene and its methods of work, it becomes interesting to observe the file-sharing community, which has undergone significant growth over the past few years. A huge number of closed and half-closed communities for the exchange of multimedia content and software has created “releasers from the people”, if you want Web 2.0 or user-generated content from the world of piracy. The main segment of such releases is rips of films and audio disks ripped off from serial media, because their production requires a minimum of knowledge and time. It comes to the fact that on the same trays in Moscow they begin to sell the very "popular releases". But to ordinary people, as usual, it’s all the same what to watch on a DVD player :)

Where?

The main base for the existence of groups are channels on IRC servers, equipped with additional gadgets in the form of eggbot and other things. There are also more or less public channels, common to all participants of the scene, where specially designed bots publish information about the latest releases. All participants of the scene (members of release groups close to them, release distributors, etc.) have very clear distribution by roles: group leaders, crackers, uploaders, hackers supporting a network of hacked FTP servers, etc. (for more, see here ) . Thanks to this, a clear conspiracy is preserved, and the latest releases are scattered throughout the Internet (and these are hundreds and thousands of FTP servers, hacked and controlled by sceners) for a couple of hours, then getting into public IRC-XDCC distributors, Newsgroups, and finally to file sharing networks like eDonkey and BitTorrent. And only from there fresh warez falls on the computers of ordinary users, and I hasten to draw your attention to the trays of Gorbushka and other questionable platforms for the sale of pirated content.

Historically, the term “the scene” denotes a community of people engaged in a certain collective activity and having a place to apply this activity (the English word “scene” can be interpreted differently). Originated in the days of the BBS ( Bulletin Board System - electronic bulletin board ) in the United States, the scene eventually spread to Europe, and with the popularization of the Internet - around the world. The first BBSs were fairly powerful (for those times) servers with a switchboard on several telephone lines, which placed around several megabytes of data and allowed connecting / receiving these data to the connected users. In general - a modern forum, somewhat stretched in time. Due to the rather narrow range of tasks performed by computers of the time, the first releases were hacked copies of games and various software. With the growth of the scene itself and the appearance of the first groups, the releases began to take an increasingly distinct form of the finished product. For the standard, it was considered to supply the executable crack'a or keygen'a and the NFO-release with the corporate stylistics of the group, and, often, with audio-visual work on an arbitrary theme. The top groups paid a lot of attention to their cards, which later led to the self-determination of Artssena and Demoscena as a separate type of computer art.
With the development of high-speed Internet in the USA and Europe, the way the products produced by the stage have spread has changed. Scenar groupings own a network of high-speed FTP servers (so-called topsites ) installed on 100/1000 Mbps connections. The network is designed in such a way that once-flooded release is automatically mirrored to dozens of topsite installed around the world. From topsite releases fall into the illegal network of FTP-servers, and then descend lower and lower in the hierarchy of the underground , up to the end user.

A simple user of the network can find out about the produced releases on the so-called. NFO-sites where NFO-shniki releases are published. Typical examples of such resources are NFOrce , iSONEWS, and the like. It is believed that if the release information is not published on one of the NFO sites, it makes no sense to search for it on the network - it is not an official release of the scene and may turn out to be a fake or even contain a Trojan.

It should be noted that the participants of the scene themselves are far from enthusiastic about the fact that their products receive such distribution and fall into the hands of ordinary users. Which is quite logical, because initially the Scene works for itself and the participants of the performance are interested only in “respect”, manifested from the same people as professionals, and not from ordinary “lamers”. In addition, this practice leads to a strong "flare" of the scene from the FBI, Interpol and other "interfering" organizations. But, as the evolution of the network showed, the penetration of the scene’s products into the lives of ordinary people is inevitable, because the scene itself is growing and it is impossible to keep track of all its members.

Why?

The rivalry lies at the very core of the scene. The release group is not just a handful of people, it is a sharply sharpened tool in which each member clearly plays its role. Only by working smoothly and together you can glorify your team, earning the respect of colleagues on the stage. Cherished result for any group
- release the content before others, or even before the official release of the product on the screens / on sale. One of the typical examples is the “feat” of the DEViANCE group, which released the final version of Unreal Tournament 2004 24 hours before the official release of the game (with the crack already ready!), Hacking and the release of Windows 95 by the DoD group (Drink Or Die) 2 weeks ( !!) before the store release. And such examples of the sea, especially in relation to stolen copies of films / music.

[BE] Nico from the FTiReloaded site compiled a list of The Biggest Groups in Scene history , which included 15 of the most successful groups in the history of the scene and their achievements. Among them are teams such as DEViANCE , Drink Or Die (based in Russia, a release group, one of the main achievements - the first hacking protect DVDs from copying), MYTH , FAiRLiGHT , CORE (one of the founders of IRC bots, of the achievements - the first the release of Windows 2000 , the number of keygen / crack - passes for 10,000!), and of course the Razor 1911 . The latter is, in fact, a legendary team that has been operating for 20 years (founded in 1985), which survived several police raids, but is still active on the scene (a vivid example is the release of Battlefield 2142 on October 14, 2006, for 6 days before the start of sales of the game).



Still alive?

Because all the activities of the scene are essentially illegal; attempts to catch its members red-handed have been made more than once . One of the most famous operations — Operation Buccaneer and Operation Fastlink required coordination of departments of entire countries, such as the USA, England, Germany, Israel, France, Sweden, and the like. The main problem in the development of such “raids” is the fact of surprise, because the attackers are far from script-kiddies , often being better security experts than the people who carry out their “development”, and are ready to destroy any incriminating information at any time. An interesting fact is that in a large number of cases, the delayed servers are located at universities and institutes with a large supply of Internet channels and capacities that sceners use for their own purposes. For example, in the course of Operation Buccaneer, searches were carried out at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of California, the University of Oregon, etc.

Movie

It is rather difficult to judge about the volume of the stage itself (due to the deep conspiracy of its activities), but given that the participants of the action decided to break out into a whole “TV series based on motives” (!!!), it means that it’s still far from sunset . The series received the simple title The Scene and has its own page on the network - www.welcometothescene.com , which, by the way, is quite legally offered to download any of the two seasons already released. The author of this text has not yet looked at the series, but judging by the description, it is a biography of everyday life of “sceners” with the eternal struggle for respect, at the same time fighting off regulators and sweeping out their activities in all possible ways.

Long live The Scene?

Sources

Wikipedia
AboutTheScene
FTiReloaded
Welcometothecene