Warez: Encyclopedia II - Warez - Distribution of warez

Warez - Distribution of warez

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 rely on 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 competent programmer to patch the original program. Usually these types of releases are MP3, cloned game images and movies.

Warez - Distribution methods

There are several methods warez creators can distribute their material. The methods include, but are not limited to: Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP), File Transfer Protocol (FTP), File eXchange Protocol (FXP), BitTorrent (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 by the software company.
2. A warez group might use one of its contacts to obtain a pre-release copy, steal it from a DVD/CD pressing plant, or obtain it from a retail store before release date or once it has been released.
3. It is then sent to a skilled software cracker/programmer to remove copy prevention.
4. It is packed in proper format (usually split and compressed using the RAR file format), and it is 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), eDonkey (eMule), the Gnutella/Gnutella2 network (Limewire, Bearshare, Shareaza, iMesh, etc.), and Soulseek. In this way, warez becomes available to the general public.

P2P release process can be as follows:

1. A popular game is released. It has strong copy protection mechanism, and scene groups are working hard to bypass it.
2. Some enthusiast has been waiting for hours in front of the store, and as clock turns 8, the doors open, and he rushes in to buy the game.
3. He takes his game home, and makes an image of the DVD with CloneCD
4. While the torrent generator is calculating chunk checksums, he posts a message on his local forum, telling he has new game and image
5. Some people wouldn't believe that he actually has the game, since there's no scene release yet, so he takes a picture of the game DVD and posts it on the forum, along with a link to the torrent file which he already uploaded to his favourite tracker, and where he's seeding the image
6. The torrent starts spreading, since many people are reading the forum, and it gets reposted on other trackers as well
7. As people complete their downloads, they start other p2p softwares to resume or start new downloads, and share the game image to other p2p networks

By now, there's hundreds of copies being spread around in various different networks, and it is relatively easy to find a download for the game, even with www search engine.

Warez - File formats of 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 to 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.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Distribution of warez", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki