I remember warez being the sole driver of my modem upgrade path from 9600 to 14,400 to 28,800, finally to very unstable 33,600 bps, then to trying to convince my parents to order a second phone line for... uh... modem... stuff... And then, suddenly it was off to undergrad where, lo and behold there were these two weird looking "RJ45 jacks" in each dorm room, and I soon realized I'd never have to worry about modem speed again...
Author authorized epub available here: <a href="https://github.com/gfscott/warez-the-infrastructure-and-aesthetics-of-piracy" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/gfscott/warez-the-infrastructure-and-aest...</a>
I still remember the day, circa 1997, that I found an anonymous-enabled FTP site on a uunet domain that had been used as a drop site by various couriers, and let me tell you, this high schooler's 540MB hard drive was not large enough.
Discussed a bit at the time:<p><i>Warez: The Infrastructure and Aesthetics of Piracy</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29633143">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29633143</a> - Dec 2021 (13 comments)
I remember and miss the golden days. Although it was probably glitter and not actually gold. Still, it was exciting. 3v3n 4 teh sc1pt kidd14s sti77 learnin’ ta sh4ve.
This is dense. I skimmed through hoping to see examples of the “aesthetics” with screenshots of old school installers (like the ones from Razor 1911, Class, Deviance etc) - it looks like these are scattered around the web, though. If anyone wants to relive some of the old chiptunes from these installers there’s <a href="https://archive.org/details/codex-installer-music-5-2018-03-192kbit-aac" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/codex-installer-music-5-2018-03-...</a>
Razor 1911! Now here’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time, but teenage me was very grateful to.<p>The .nfo files alone, distributed with most releases, carrying the most elaborate of ASCII art. I distinctly remember the aesthetics you mention.
> The .nfo files alone, distributed with most releases, carrying the most elaborate of ASCII art. I distinctly remember the aesthetics you mention.<p>See their 40 year retrospective demo for a lot more of that: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dybkLM-1eQo" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dybkLM-1eQo</a> :)
I still refer to 1:37 pm (13:37) as "l33t o'clock" and 7:11 pm (19:11) as "Razor o'clock". They seem to come up remarkably often when I glance at the time, like 11:11 for normies, but I think all of these are some sort of pareidolic/selection-bias effect wherein your brain is just more likely to remember/notice times that it considers significant.
Remember realizing it’s 0x777, one better than 666?
I'm always a little surprised when I don't see mentions of FSP [1] in works like this. For a short time, it seemed to be the warez transfer means of choice for those looking to fly under the radar and avoid detection. (So I'm told.) But maybe it wasn't much more than a footnote in the grand scheme of things.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Service_Protocol" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Service_Protocol</a>
I always thought FXP was a much more common tool, as you could move releases between beefy servers without having to download them first <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_eXchange_Protocol" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_eXchange_Protocol</a>
I'm old enough to remember when IRC DCC fservs were a popular distribution channel.
I bought the print edition, which is a bit ironic.
Get ready, a 300 page pdf, not just your average run of the mill story. Marked for later...
I own the physical book. I really wanted to like it but I found the style of prose grating and the overuse of "ibid" in the citations peeving.
Book site with info and other links: <a href="https://punctumbooks.com/catalog/10.53288/0339.1.00" rel="nofollow">https://punctumbooks.com/catalog/10.53288/0339.1.00</a>