Live data from Hacker News

TV piracy groups formally adopt h264

scenerules.irc.gs

111–120 of 125 posts

Re: TV piracy groups formally adopt h264

#111
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Competition forces rules to be born. Not just competition for prestige, a competition for access. Topsites are fuelled by racers. These are the couriers, who transfer data between multiple topsites they have access to. All topsites have a multiplier. For every 1MB you upload, you can download ~3MB. If you don't each a quota or are not in the top ~15 racers by the end of the week your access will be revoked. With acce…

They still using pftp these days?

http://www.drftpd.org/

Re: TV piracy groups formally adopt h264

#112
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, the bulk of legitimate releases comes from the "leaders" of the ISO scene.. As of right now there are ~38 users in the IRC channel representing the the majority of the top level groups. To me this is absolutely frightening that a channel like this even exists.

Frightening? Of all the cabalistic groups in the world, the scene groups are not among the ones I am frightened by...

I think you misunderstood why it is frightening to be associated with that channel.

Re: TV piracy groups formally adopt h264

#114
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FXP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_eXchange_Protocol

Pfft. Pro couriers don't even bother with FXP. A shell account on a fast European box and mget/mput are the weapons of choice.

ex-pHASE courier here. You must be referring to 0day couriering. We use a custom pftp w/ rel server to chain our FXP routes.

Re: TV piracy groups formally adopt h264

#115
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Competition forces rules to be born. Not just competition for prestige, a competition for access. Topsites are fuelled by racers. These are the couriers, who transfer data between multiple topsites they have access to. All topsites have a multiplier. For every 1MB you upload, you can download ~3MB. If you don't each a quota or are not in the top ~15 racers by the end of the week your access will be revoked. With acce…

They still using pftp these days?

Yes. pftp is the tool of choice for couriers still.. albeit they hardly resemble the original source.

Re: TV piracy groups formally adopt h264

#117
post #108
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for insight on how scene works. But my main question - where is profit? I.e. what drives this scene and what these groups compete for?

Topsites can offer a pay to leech scheme. It's often a hushed topic and people don't like to talk about it (because it is insecure). Many topsites are at it. A lot of scene members react badly to topsites like this, and often people infiltrate such sites and public a "scene notice" about them containing siteop nicknames, hostnames, IRC/FTP details, and screenshots. Scene notices are like the news system of the scene.…

Let's not forget about hardware donors. Donate a hard drive? Get an account and some credits! Sites such as LSD and LOOP did this.. and many more still do.

Re: TV piracy groups formally adopt h264

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The (movie/audio/warez/demo) "scene" is not anarchic at all but rather a very well organised distributed processing machine. You probably know these guys organise into "groups" but there is lots of other stuff you likely do not know. I will describe below aspects of the warez scene, as it was some 10 years ago. I believe most observations continue to hold today and are probably mirrored in the movie-release scene. So…

I'm sorry, but you (as ZeroGravitas has already pointed out) have only convinced me that you don't know what anarchism is. :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-communism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_communism

I don't have a fancy liberal arts education so perhaps I'm misunderstanding the finer points of anarchism. As I understand it, the concept involves rejecting authority and hierarchy and neither of these is true of the scene.

Certainly things are not organised as rigidly as a government or traditional business, but neither does the scene resemble a collectivist commune. There are authority figures and hierarchies everywhere. The fact that there are quality standards for releases, that all groups (of any note) adhere to, and which are actively enforced throughout the community, should be indicative of that.

Let me spell this out for you a little further: everything from groups, to sites to individuals have their place in a pecking order. Each group for example is its own mini fiefdom; usually ran by a single leader or a council of elders. They decide what releases the group will target, what site affils to chase, what resources are required and so on. You march to their tune or leave. Initial (and often continued) membership is based on performance: if you impress with your chops, you're in. Drop the ball too many times and you're out. Always the objective is to be the best.

Post reply on HN