Warez
This is an accepted version of this page Warez is a common computing and broader cultural term referring to pirated software (i.e. illegally copied, often after deactivation of anti-piracy measures) that is distributed via the Internet.
[8] The term warez, which is intended to be pronounced like the word "wares" (/ˈwɛərz/), was coined in the 1990s;[5] its origin is with an unknown member of an underground computing circle,[citation needed] but has since become commonplace among Internet users and the mass media.
[11] Some groups (including the GNU project of the Free Software Foundation, FSF) object to the use of this and other words such as "theft" because they represent an attempt to create a particular impression in the reader: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.
[14] Software infringers generally exploit the international nature of the copyright issue to avoid law enforcement in specific countries.
[16][17] There is also a movement, exemplified by groups like The Pirate Party and scholars at The Mises Institute, that the very idea of intellectual property is an anathema to free society.
[citation needed] And, in some countries, and at some times, software "piracy" has been encouraged, and international and usual national legal protections ignored.
Unauthorized copying has been an ongoing phenomenon that started when high quality, commercially produced software was released for sale.
Whether the medium was cassette tape or floppy disk, cracking enthusiasts found a way to duplicate the software and spread it without the permission of the maker.
Machines like the Amiga and the Commodore 64 had an international network, through which software not available on one continent would eventually make its way to every region via bulletin board systems.
It was also common in the 1980s to use physical floppy disks and the postal service for spreading software, in an activity known as mail trading.
Copy-protection schemes for the early systems were designed to defeat casual duplication attempts, as "crackers" would typically release a copied game to the "pirate" community the day they were earmarked for market.
In 1992, the Software Publishers Association began to battle against this phenomenon, with its promotional video "Don't Copy That Floppy".
It and the Business Software Alliance have remained the most active anti-infringement 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).
Some of the most popular software companies that are being targeted are Adobe, Microsoft, Nero, Apple, DreamWorks, and Autodesk, to name a few.
[citation needed] Hackers would also use known software bugs to illicitly gain full administrative remote control over a computer, and install a hidden FTP service to host their wares.
[citation needed] It was important for warez group members to regulate who had access to these compromised FTP servers, to keep the network bandwidth usage low.
[citation needed] As the ability to compromise and attain full remote control of business servers became more developed, the warez groups would hack a server and install an IRC bot on the compromised systems alongside the FTP service, or the IRC bot would provide file sharing directly by itself.
This software would intelligently regulate access to the illicit data by using file queues to limit bandwidth usage, or by only running during off-hours overnight when the business owning the compromised hardware was closed for the day.
[31][32] The opportunity to find and compromise poorly secured systems on which to create an illicit warez distribution site has only increased with the popular use of broadband service by home users who may not fully understand the security implications of having their home computer always turned on and connected to the Internet[citation needed] There is generally a distinction made between different sub-types of warez.
The unusual spellings shown here were commonly used as directory names within a compromised server, to organize the files rather than having them all thrown together in a single random collection.
A CD software release can contain up to 700 megabytes of data, which presented challenges when sending over the Internet, particularly in the late 1990s when broadband was unavailable to most home consumers.
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.
A rip is a cut-down version of the title in which additions included on the legitimate DVD/CD (generally PDF manuals, help files, tutorials, and audio/video media) are omitted.
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.
