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A street vendor packing up his display of counterfeit cds after being photographed.

Warez (pronounced ['warɛs]) is both a derivative of the plural form of "software" and a contraction of warehouses. It refers primarily to copyrighted material traded in violation of its copyright license. The term generally refers to releases by organized groups, as opposed to peer-to-peer file sharing between friends or large groups of people with similar interest using a Darknet. It usually does not refer to commercial for-profit software counterfeiting. This term was initially coined by members of the various computer underground circles, but has since become commonplace among Internet users and the media.

"Warez" is used most commonly as a noun: "My neighbor downloaded 10 gigs of warez yesterday"; but can also be used as a verb: "The new Windows was warezed a month before the company officially released it". People engaging in warez production and distribution are often referred to as pirates, in this sense being defined as "One who makes use of or reproduces the work of another without authorization"[1]. Although the use of this term is controversial, it is embraced by some groups such as Pirates With Attitude. The collection of warez groups is referred to globally as the warez scene or more ambiguously The Scene.

The history of warez

Product piracy

Before there were computers and software, piracy existed; At the time, piracy was usually, though not always, profit-oriented. During the 1980s, one of the most famous products targeted were Lacoste shirts. This type of product counterfeiting was and still is done by organized crime groups often based in countries like China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, and Russia. These groups illegally produce millions of counterfeit copies of clothing, electronics, microchips, music CDs, VHS & DVD movies, and software applications. In the following sections we will concentrate on the latter two.

While most copies of pirate software are manufactured in Asian factories, their distribution often begins in first-world nations such as the United States and Western Europe, where the largest international publishers of proprietary software are located. These pirate copies are regularly sold on city streets throughout most of South America, Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. In some countries they are sold at retail price which can be worth several billion dollars annually. While the selling of pirate copies is less common in Western nations, its popularity is growing. In Western nations, pirate products are usually sold in specific areas, such as Chinatown in New York and Pacific Mall in suburban Toronto. Unlike Asian countries where pirate goods can be even sold in retailers, this kind of distribution is rare in Western nations.

File:Counterfeit software.jpg
Counterfeit copies of Adobe Photoshop 7.0 and Windows XP Home Edition, purchased on the streets of Chinatown in New York City.

The rise of software piracy

In the early 1990s, software piracy was not yet a serious problem. In 1992, the Business Software Alliance began to battle against software piracy, with its promotional video Don't Copy That Floppy. It has remained the most active anti-piracy organization worldwide, although to compensate for extensive growth in recent years, it has 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).

These are some causes which have accelerated its growth:

Popularity of computers
In the late 1990s, computers became more popular. This was attributed to Microsoft and the release of Windows 95, which greatly decreased the learning curve for using a computer. Windows 95 became so popular that in developed countries nearly every household has at least one computer. Similar to televisions and telephones, computers became a necessity to every person in the information age. As the use of computers increased, so had software and cyber crimes. The problem of warez became so serious that it had adversely affected software writers and companies.
Improvements in networking
In the mid-1990s, the average Internet user was still on dial-up, with average speed ranging between 28.8 and 33.6 kbit/s (with a maximum speed of 56 kbit/s). If one wished to download a piece of software, which could run about 20 MB, the download time could be longer than one day. Depending on network traffic, the Internet Service Provider, and the server. Around 1997, broadband began to gain popularity due to its greatly increased network speeds. As "large-sized file transfer" problems became less severe, warez became more widespread and began to affect large software files like animations and movies. The next generation of networking is optical fiber network, whose speed can reach up to 1.6 Tb/s in field deployed systems and up to 10 Tb/s in lab systems, with this seemingly unlimited bandwidth it is virtually impossible to imagine a limit as to what could be pirated.
Invention of swarming download technology
In the past, files were distributed by point-to-point technology: with a central uploader distributing files to downloaders. With these systems, a large number of downloaders for a popular file uses an increasingly larger amount of bandwidth. If there are too many downloads, the server can become unavailable. The same is true for peer-to-peer networking, with more downloaders the slower the file distribution is. With swarming technology as implemented in eDonkey2000 and BitTorrent file sharing systems, downloaders help the uploader by picking up some of its uploading responsibilites. When one downloads files, one is not only a downloader, but also an uploader. To a point, the more the downloaders there are, the faster the file distribution is.

Types of warez

There is generally a distinction made between different sub-types of warez:

  • appz - applications: generally a retail version of a software package
  • crackz - cracked applications: a trial version of software generally converted to full functionality through the use of a patch
  • gamez - games: this scene concentrates on both computer based games, and video game consoles
  • moviez - movies: pirated movies generally released while still in theaters
  • mp3z - MP3 audio: pirated albums, singles, or other audio format released in the compressed MP3 audio format

Organized groups vs. Disorganized distribution

Organized groups operate with strict ruleset of what can be released and in which format each release should be. The groups may also have private sites for internal purposes, such as archiving their own releases and transferring the unmodified material between their members. Communication within a group is usually handled through encrypted channels (with Blowfish, AES, or some other cipher & key method), using SSL secured private Internet Relay Chat (IRC) servers. Communication within a group is important in coordinating their releases. Groups usually focus on some specific area of expertise and release material from their field. These groups usually transfer material using between Topsites.

Disorganized distribution usually consists of average computer users, who are using some form of p2p to transfer material. These users often use Usenet binaries newsgroups, BitTorrent or IRC XDCC bots to distribute their material. These new releases typically don't spread far, but since there's no real way to track what was released and where, this is hard to do. Disorganized groups rarely release software, since releasing usually requires a competant programmer to patch the original program. Usually these types of releases are MP3, cloned game images and movies.

Software piracy

Software cracking groups delegate tasks efficiently among their members. These members are mostly located in first world countries where high-speed Internet connections and powerful computers are readily available. Software cracking groups are usually quite small. Only few skilled people usually do the cracking work, since the programming skills required to reverse engineer and patch code usually takes years of training and talent.

Effect of piracy on "free" and "open source" Software

Piracy can also affect free and open source software. Since it is hard to monitor the distribution of software, malicious individuals and groups can take their software away with different evil uses:

Credit Theft: People simply take the free software away and claim it is their work. If it is open source software, it is even easier for them to remove any tracks which can identify the original author(s). They then add their own names and/or logos so as to pretend the work is their own.[2]
Repackaging and Resale: In order to make a profit out of freeware, they resell their products after stealing works from the original software authors. An example is the database thief of Kuwait company OnlinePcFix, who offers a software named SpyFerret. What the company did was to simply steal the complete database from Spybot - Search & Destroy. To hide the fact that the company stole Spybot's database, they make use of encryption.[3]
Modification and Resale: It has occurred most with "open source" software, where the source code is freely available and modified. An example of this was CherryOS. Its authors took the source code from PearPC and sold it as their own creation. Although the group was later discovered to have copied source code, they still have not publicly acknowledged the theft. This act is against the principles of the GNU General Public License, under which PearPC was released.

Movie piracy

Movie piracy was looked upon as impossible by the major studios. When dial-up was common in early and mid 1990s, movies distributed on the Internet tended to be small. The techniques that were usually used to make them small were to use compression software and lower the video quality.

At that time, the largest piracy threat was software. However, as broadband gained popularity beginning around 1998, higher quality movies have begun to see widespread distribution. Movie piracy has become so common that it has caused major concern amongst movie studios and their representative organizations. The movie industry is currently lacking an application against the illegal distribution, such as iTunes, which is easy to adapt and offers a legal alternative for downloading music. The MPAA is often running campaigns where it tries to discourage young people from copying material without permission.

From history to today

The first and most well-known form of pirated movies is known as a "Cam" recording. These rips were the first attempts at movie piracy, but as these recordings often have low quality, alternative methods were sought. For these methods and examples see the section different release types below.

File:American pie evil workprint cap.jpg
Screenshot of the EViL workprint rip of "American Pie"

Starting in 1998, feature films began to be released on the internet by warez groups prior to their theatrical release. These pirated versions came usually in form of VCD or SVCD. A prime example was the EViL release of American Pie.[4] This is notable for three reasons:

  1. It was released in uncensored workprint format. The later theatrical release was cut down by several minutes and had scenes reworked to avoid nudity to pass MPAA guidelines.
  2. It was released nearly two months prior to its release in theaters (CNN Headline News reported on its early release).
  3. It was listed by the movie company as one of the reasons it released an Unrated DVD edition.

In October, 1999 DeCSS was released, this program allowed anyone to remove the CSS encryption on a DVD so that one could exactly copy the content; combined with the "DivX ;-) 3.11 Alpha" codec released shortly after, the new codec increased video quality from near VHS to almost DVD quality when encoding from a DVD source. The early DivX releases were mostly internal for group use, but once the codec spread, it became accepted as a standard. It quickly became the format for scene. With help from associates who either work for a movie theater, movie production company, or video rental company, groups were supplied with massive amount of material, and new releases began appearing at very fast pace. When a new release of DivX came out (Version 4.0), the codec went commercial, and the need for a free codec XviD emerged. Today, XviD has replaced DivX almost entirely, DivX isn't even allowed as a format for scene releases anymore. Although DivX codec has evolved from version 4 to 6 during this time, it is considered obsolete due the commercial nature of the codec.

With broadband growing more popular as well ISO (an image file intended for a writable DVD) copied from the actual DVD was slowly becoming a downloadable option as well.

Different release types

File:A night at the roxbury cam cap 2.jpg
Screenshot of a cam quality rip of "A Night at the Roxbury" (see another screenshot)
File:American pie workprint cap.jpg
A workprint copy of American Pie, note the index timer below the video frame.
File:Shes all that screener cap.jpg
A screener copy of "She's All That"

Here is a list of movie ripping methods and sources, ranging from the worst quality to the best. Some sample images are provided for visual comparison. Note: Screeners make a small exception here, since the content may differ from a retail version, it can be considered as lower quality than a DVD-Rip (even if the screener in question was sourced from DVD).

  • Cam (denoted by "CAM", very common) – A copy made in a cinema using a camcorder, possibly mounted on a tripod. Sound source is the camera microphone. Cam rips can appear online fast, after first preview, or premiere of the film, but the quality is always quite horrible.
  • Telesync (denoted by "TS" or "TELESYNC", common) – A copy made in a cinema using a camcorder mounted on a tripod for a more steady shot. Synchronized with a secondary audio recording, either done with a professional microphone in an empty cinema, fed directly from the cinema's sound system, or captured from an FM radio transmission intended for hearing-impaired customers. Often, a "Cam" is mislabelled as a telesync. Telesync usually has certain angle in the image, because the camera is below and possibly off from the center of the screen.
  • Telecine (denoted by "TC" or "TELECINE", somewhat rare) – A copy captured from a film print using a machine that transfers the movie from its analog reel to digital format. These were rare because the telecine machine for making these prints is very costly and very large, however, recently they have become much more common. Telecine is basically same quality as DVD, since the technique is same as digitizing the actual film to DVD, but the result is inferior, since the source material is usually lower quality copy reel. Telecine machines usually cause a slight left-right jitter in the picture, and the color levels are inferior compared to DVD.
  • Workprint (denoted by "WP" or "WORKPRINT", rare) – A copy made from an unfinished version of a film produced by the studio. Typically a workprint is missing effects overlays, and may not be identical to its theatrical release. Some workprints have a time index marker running in a corner or on the top edge; some may also include a watermark. Workprint might be uncut version, and missing some material that would appear in the final movie.
  • Screener (denoted by "SCR", "SCREENER", "DVD-" or "VHS-SCREENER", common) – Somewhat less common than DVD-Rips, these are early DVD or VHS releases of the theatrical version of a film, typically sent to movie reviewers, Academy members, and executives for review purposes. A screener normally has a message overlaid on its picture, with wording similar to: "The film you are watching is a promotional copy, if you purchased this film at a retail store please contact 1-800-NO-COPIES to report it." Apart from this, some movie studios release their screeners with a number of scenes of varying duration shown in black-and-white. Aside from this message, and the occaisional B&W scenes, screeners are normally of identical quality to a retail DVD-Rip.
  • DVD-Rip (denoted by "DVD-Rip" or "DVD-R", very common) – a final retail version of a film, typically released before it is available outside its originating region. Often after one "release group" releases a high-quality DVD-Rip, the "race" to release that film will stop. Because of their high quality, DVD-Rips generally replace any earlier copies that may already have been circulating.
  • DSRip (denoted by "DS" or "DS-Rip", currently rare as HDTV is still itself rare) – Digital stream rip is rip that is captured from a digital source stream, such as HDTV or DVB transmission. With HDTV source, the quality can even sometimes surpass DVD. Movies as DSRip are quite rare, more often the source is used for TV ripping.

Distribution methods of warez

File:The pirate bay.jpg
The popular bittorrent warez site The Pirate Bay.

There are several methods warez creators can distribute their material. The methods include Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP), File Transfer Protocol (FTP), File eXchange Protocol (FXP), Bit Torrent (BT), Peer-to-peer (P2P), and Usenet.

The typical warez scene release process is as follows:

  1. A popular new piece of commercial software is released.
  2. A warez group might use one of its contacts to obtain a pre-release copy, steals it from a DVD/CD pressing plant , or obtains it from a retail store.
  3. It is then sent to a skilled software cracker/programmer to remove copy prevention.
  4. It is packed in proper format, and uploaded to private FTP servers which act as a group's archive.
  5. The packs are uploaded to Topsites, and once they are complete on all the sites, the group PREs.
  6. It is then moved by couriers to many smaller and possibly slower FTP servers around the world.

Steps 4, 5, and 6 can be used to describe all types of Warez, since the distribution format is defined in standards.

Many, if not all, release groups claim to look down on peer-to-peer networks and protest against users making their warez available on such networks. However, the most widespread way to release warez is to leak it through peer-to-peer file sharing networks like the Warez Network (Warez P2P), Fasttrack (KaZaA), the Gnutella/Gnutella2 network (Limewire, Bearshare, Shareaza, iMesh, etc...), and Soulseek. In this way, warez becomes available to the general public.

File formats of warez

For more specific information see Standard (warez)

The modern warez scene deals with petabytes of data and thus the need for an efficient system of handling files was apparent. A typical CD software release can contain up to 700 megabytes of data, which presents challenges when sending over the Internet. This was especially true in the early days when everything was done via dial-up connections. These challenges apply to an even greater extent for a single-layer DVD release, which can contain up 4.7 GB of data. The warez scene made it standard practice to split releases up into many separate pieces, called disks, using several file compression formats: (historical LZH, ACE, ARJ), ZIP and RAR.

This method has many advantages over sending a single large file:

  • The two-layer compression could sometimes achieve almost a tenfold improvement over the original DVD/CD image. The overall file size is cut down and lessens the transfer time and bandwidth required.
  • If there is a problem during the file transfer and data was corrupted, it is only necessary to resend the few corrupted rars instead of resending the entire large file.
  • This method also creates the facility of downloading from many sources.

File verification is accomplished using SFV files, which is usually integrated into the topsites FTP server software so that files are verified automatically as they are uploaded. Ironically, the distribution methods used by the warez scene are so efficient that they are sometimes superior to the ones used by actual software producers.

Releases of software titles often come in two forms. The full form is a full version of game or application, generally released as CD or DVD-writable disk images (BIN or ISO files). A rip is a cut-down version of the title in which important additions included on the legitimate DVD/CD (generally Portable Document Format (PDF) manuals, help files, tutorials, and sample media) is omitted. In a game rip, generally all game video is removed, and the audio is compressed to MP3 or Vorbis, which must then be decoded to its original form before playing.

Motivations and arguments

Pirates generally exploit the international nature of the copyright issue to avoid law enforcement in specific countries. In Russia, the copying of software was once explicitly permitted by law when such software was not in the Russian language. This is no longer the case, but prosecutions for copyright infringement are still very rare.

The production and/or distribution of warez is illegal in most countries. However, it is typically overlooked in poorer third world countries. Some first world countries have loopholes in legislation that allow the warez scene to operate almost legally as compared to P2P-distribution, since it can be proven that shared material was targeted to a limited group.

Pro-warez argument

The morality of copyright infringement is also disputed, with members of warez groups often viewing their actions as "socially positive". The following are their justifications:

  1. Difficulty of implementing copyright enforcement – Warez groups believe that they are allowed to continue their activities due to the nature of Internet globalization, inconsistent worldwide laws and technical difficulties in tracking warez groups.
  2. Difference between copyright infringement and conventional property theft – Cracking software is different from theft or stealing other people's property. One difference is cracking software is beneficial, at least, to the users.
  3. Difference between legally wrong and morally wrong – Although copyright laws state that it is illegal to crack people's software, there is a difference between "legally wrong" and "morally wrong". To them, it is indeed morally right to do so. It is beneficial to the world, at least to the users of warez.
  4. Criticism on copyright laws – Some warez groups may regard copyright as harmful to society. For example, it hinders creation and over-protects the rights of copyright holders too much. Sometimes the protection is even ridiculous or unnecessary. For instance, it is ridiculous to regard "a legitimate backup copy of a purchased CD" or "a format transfer of a music (eg from *.wav to *.mp3)" as illegal in some countries.
  5. Criticism of copyright holders – There are various reasons, including: some warez groups may hate copyright holders or their companies. They distribute software as form of revenge possibly because they have had bad experiences with the software company(s). The copyright holder is unjust or greedy in that it exploits its own staff.
  6. Philosophy of freebies – All software should be distributed free of charge. Reasons include: the effect/cost of creating software is just one-off. It is wrong to charge every copy of the software.
  7. High price – Since copyright holders sell their products and services at a unacceptably high prices, users should not pay for these companies or holders.
  8. Perceived injustice of the poor – This point is simliar to the above reasons. Warez groups feel it is bad not to share products and services with those who could not afford to obtain it otherwise. These groups compare themselves to Robin Hood.
  9. Full trial before buy – Some software owners only give function-limited demo or do not give demo at all. Users need to fully trial them before deciding whether to buy it or not.
  10. Deprivation of Individual Rights – Laws such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act may also contribute to the motivations of those involved in warez, as user rights are increasingly threatened in the United States and rights holders attempt to lock out consumers.
  11. Increase popularity of some file formats – File formats such as DivX, XviD, and MP3 might not have become so widespread were it not for warez.
  12. Increase market share – Companies such as Adobe, Borland, and Microsoft have gained big market shares due to vast numbers of warez users, such as college students and working people who adopted applications as they were readily available. Later when they find out that the software is useful, these people purchase legitimate licenses for future uses. This helps companies with software familarity and dominancy.

Anti-warez argument

People opposed to warez typically argue that the motivating factors given by cracking groups are not authentic:

  1. High price is not an excuse to piracy – They argue that "unreasonable price" or "could not afford the price" is not an excuse to steal other people's property, whether it is intellectual or tangible. An analogy used asks if one should take goods away from shops if that person believes that the prices are too high. For that argument, if one believes that the prices are too high, the person is advised to visit other shops or to not buy the goods in question.
  2. Harm is larger than benefits – Although they may agree that there are some positive effects of warez on the world, they argue that its benefits cannot offset its harms. For example, copyright holders need to sell their intellectual property to earn a living. What those in the warez community do is equal to burning money from their pockets. When the business becomes hardly profitable, no one is willing to make any software, games, or music. Consequently, the public will suffer.
  3. Law is indisputable – They claim the morality of copyright infringement is not disputed in the legal community or mainstream society.
    • As long as cracking groups are citizens of a society, it is not for them to violate laws at will. They would further argue that cracking and warez have no relation to civil disobedience, which is often considered legitimate.
    • They typically justify enforcing copyright for the same reasons that laws against burglary are enforced.

Legality

Copyright infringement is sometimes a civil wrong or a crime, depending on the country and jurisdiction. However, there are exceptions and loopholes in some countries.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition "Pirate".
  2. ^ Patrick M. Kolla (14. April 2005) Here's another database thief. Spybot Search&Destroy.
  3. ^ Video CD: American Pie. iSONews.
  4. ^ GPL Violations

References

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