NULL mag Issue 02 10 The SCENE!

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===================================== 
A HISTORY OF THE SCENE 
Written by Ipggi (April 20, 1999) 
A Product of http://www.defacto2.net 
===================================== 
Shunted over to ASCII by Jason Scott of TEXTFILES.COM 

INTRODUCTION 

Ever since there has been the ability to store data on a personal  
computer and commercial software for sale, there has been the  
existence of pirating. Pirating, cracking and even pirate scenes 
go all the way back to the late seventies, and maybe even earlier. 
By the early eighties some machines (such as the BBC Macro in Europe) 
where so riddled with pirates that the programming companies gave up. 
They discontinued producing and porting software for the affected  
computers because there was simply no money to be made. 

This report like this webpage is designed with the PC scene in mind.  

WHEN DID THE PC SCENE BEGIN? 

Of all the many 8bit computers and scenes of the early eighties  
(the golden age?) most people will agree that the Commodore 64  
was the biggest of them all. The Commodore 64 scene started back 
in 1982 (mainly by a lot of young teenagers). While the PC was 
released earlier to the public it would be the Commodore 64’s  
pirate scene which would introduce many of the standards that today 
we take as granted. During this time on the PC there were some small 
groups with people releasing and cracking, but these cracked programs 
usually remained local. The international PC scene did not take off 
until 1987. This was when people started to trade software with  
cracks over longer distances and overseas which formed the basis  
of the now old school BBS scene.  

EARLY NFOs AND CRACKTROS 

Unfortunately for us the eighties PC scene is one of the lesser  
known and least documented. Due to the limitations of the PC at  
the time, cracktros where extremely rare (unlike the Commodore 64,  
Amiga or Atari ST) and text files to document the releases were  
usually never created.  

In the eighties many cracks where usually created by individuals  
rather then groups (groups being a collection of people who work 
under the same name). These individuals would normally leave a  
signature in the release to identify themselves as the cracker. 
For example on a game's title screen you might see in the bottom  
corner "cracked by Lord Blix". By the end of the eighties it was  
the groups who where cracking releases rather then just individuals. 
And with groups being a more prestigious lot they would sometimes  
insert a custom title screen designed especially for that release 
(simular to today’s installers). Bentley Sidewell Productions,  
a famous cracking group of the late eighties would usually use  
a CGA picture or animation to show that they cracked the title.  
While International Network of Crackers would use a less  
captivating ANSI graphic. 

It's worth noting that Bentley Sidewell Productions animations  
were probably the first cracktros and intros for the PC. So  
technically the origins of the PC demo scene goes back to the old  
PC cracking scene.  

It was the hacking groups of the eighties that first started to  
use acronyms to encrypt their names. This was often used to  
confuse unwanted people from differentiating the different hacking  
groups but it's main benefit was the addreviated typing. Typing  
abbreviations is a lot easier then typing the complete group  
name. But the standard three letter acronym was not really  
considered standard until the PC's emergence in the early nineties 
(groups on other computers had up to five or six letter acronyms). 
This was due to DOS's limited file naming capability of only being 
able to handle eleven characters (eight . three) per file.  

When crackers wanted to add last minute notes or information  
about their cracks they would include a small text file into the  
release. Eventually groups started adding regular text files to  
their releases. Information in these files would usually state  
a note from the cracker, some information on how to play the game  
(keyboard keys etc) and maybe a member listing or some BBS numbers.  
It was about this time that the groups started to implement a set  
naming format to these text files. This format use an eight letter 
abbreviated form of the program title followed by .DOC (short for  
document). Other groups decided to replace the .DOC acronym with  
one based on their groups name for example SIMCITY.CIA, SIMCITY.INC  
or SIMCITY.PTL. Hence the standard group three letter acronym was  
formed.  

To the best of knowledge The Humble Guys in 1990 introduced the now  
standard .NFO acronym. One assumes NFO was created to be the three  
letter acronym for the word information or info. The initial format  
was the standard eight letter game title abbreviation followed by  
.NFO before it eventually evolved to the now current standard of  
GROUP.NFO.  

COURIERS 

The earliest long distance couriers started off under a  
different title, Phreakers. Most phreakers where usually involved 
primarily in the HPAV (Hacking, Phreaking, Anarchy, Virus) type  
scenes with pirating being a second priority. This made the scene 
very defragmentated and slow, it would take weeks for releases to  
be spread continentally. The problem was that not many pirates  
knew how to phreak and paying for long distance phone calls was  
out of the question. Thankfully in around 1988 a new phreak group 
was created. North American Pirate Phreak Alliance (NAP/PA) was  
the group and it's goal was to spread the How To's Of Phreaking  
to the pirates. Many of the top boards of the time quickly  
became affiliations of NAP/PA, which made the information available 
to the right people. This information literally helped the scene  
come a closer and a little more united.  

By the early nineties many people had less respect for couriers  
compared to that of the crackers, sysops and packagers. This  
opinion was usually formed because courering was not the most  
challenging of tasks, almost anyone could do it. It was more of a  
matter of how much you where willing to risk or spend rather than  
a person’s skill. At one point The Humble Guys even named their  
couriers, slaves. Couriers would have to log onto The Humble  
Guys BBS’s as slave 1, slave 2 etc. This caused an uproar in  
the scene but at the time The Humble Guys where the big guys  
and could generally do what they wanted.  

These days pre’ing releases (couriering a release before it's 
made public) is common practice, it wasn't so back then. Due to  
the limitations in speed and the fact that you had to dial into  
each BBS individually, releases took longer to spread. This ended  
up coining the one most famous of BBS phrases, "0 day warez".  
Zero day warez is when one gets the release on the same day  
as it was released, be it from the software company or from a  
group. The saying was often used to differentiate the good BBSs 
from the others and by suppliers for use on the status of software.  

BULLETIN BOARD SYSTEMS 

Many BBSs at this time needed to pay a monthly fee for  
their group affiliation (money which usually came from the  
user-pay leech acccounts). This money would be used by the  
groups in many ways but mainly to obtain software. A broke group  
usually had a dry run when it came to releasing. This monthly  
fee plus all the extra hardware and phone lines required  
a major investment by the system operator. And it was investment  
that gave the siteop the respect they required from the BBS users.  
There was something about a top ranking sysop, because you  
were in their homes (electronically) using their equipment.  
They had total control over everything that happened on their  
system, including your personal information.  

Now, running a BBS that contained illegal software was a risky  
business. One because the system was usually based at the  
system operator’s home and two because there where some companies 
that were desperate to stop the flow of the illegal copies of 
their programs. These corporations including Microsoft and Novell  
worked with local and federal police in attempt to take down  
these means of distributing software.  

Now you all know about the Net Act. in the USA that now makes  
it legal for anyone with a certain amount (dollar value) of  
pirate software to be convicted. But you may be wondering how  
people were busted before this act was created. Well, the most 
common reason would be that the offender was making money from 
illegal software (selling CDs or floppies) which would attract 
the attention of the police. While the other more harsh way of  
being busted was to get a civil case law suit against you. These  
were never pretty and usually involved the complete loss of  
anything that was computer related from one's house. Civil  
suits were bought on by software companies and are covered by a  
completely different set of laws to the criminal codes. Because  
of this most boards banned Novell releases due to Novell’s  
semi-successful world wide anti-piracy campaign. 

The death of the BBS one could say happened after Park Central  
closed down. This was at the time the number one BBS in the  
world and was a central link for the scene. It was often used  
to prove who won a release race, being the boxing ring and the  
referee. But some groups got smart and started avoiding the  
BBSs all together and instead decided to spread the release  
exclusively over the Internet. This left people a confusing  
situation of where there was one group winning the release on  
the BBS’s and the other winning on the Internet. The final  
nail in the coffin for the bulletin board system was the infamous 
Cyberstrike campaign of February 1997 where five major BBS’s 
were busted in a single week. It caused many BBS and some sites  
to close shop permanently in the fear of themselves being  
the next victims.  

SUPPLIERS 

The supplying methods for groups in early years weere not  
too different to today’s methods. Store pickups and ordering 
directly from the company where the main means for many groups.  
The money would usually come from various payments such as  
official BBS affiliates. Another more attractive way to supply 
was to use insiders who are kind of like corporate saboteurs  
for the pirate scene. Insiders obtain the program directly from 
the source before it’s released to the stores. It saves a lot  
of effort on the group’s behalf as they don’t have to keep  
tabs on the program and they avoid the rush to grab it when it  
goes to the stores. It also left the crackers more time to  
tinker around with the program.  

A more creative way to obtain pre’store software was for group 
members to pretend they worked for a gaming magazine. The  
software companies where usually more then happy to send out  
their software if given the correct information. But when the 
companies smartened up this option became less viable.  

SCENE ART 

There have been artists for the PC ever since there has been  
ASCII and ANSI. But international groups in the way that we  
know of today only started in around late 1990. ACID (ANSI  
Creators In Demand) were the first of these international  
groups, trend setters who originally specialised in ANSI art  
and ANSIMation ads. They earned their reputation of being one  
of the best in their field by supporting the best pirate boards 
of the time. Just like our demo scene the PC art scene emerged 
from the pirate scene. Unfortunately this link has long  
since been lost with the warez scene art becoming second class.  

As the PC gained more acceptance in Europe (an area dominated 
by the Amiga and Atari) some members of the bigger Amiga groups 
found themselves using or buying these strange PC machines and 
needed software. So a long line of Commodore cracking groups  
made their way across to the DOStel system, including Fairlight, 
Razor 1911 and the merged Tri Star and Red Sector.  

THE INTERNET 

The Internet has often been used by the scene for  
various reasons but it never became a serious tool until 
the early nineties. Little did people know at this time  
how much this tool would change the scene, to basically 
create a new generation of pirate scene. Bulletin board  
systems had always kept the scene secret and underground. A  
newbie often found it extremely difficult to gain access  
to even a mediocre local board. Most of these people faced 
the daunting task of hunting down a system password just  
to get the logon prompt and then new user password to even 
apply for membership. But the Internet changed all this, 
the Internet made everything that was once so hard to obtain 
so easy. IRC, email, ftp and webpages all open to Joe public.  
And in 1994 they flooded in, drove after drove causing  
great despair among the many old schoolers. Many of these  
people didn't appreciate their turf being overrun by these  
so-called lamers, so they closed their doors. While the  
old doors closed new doors opened, newsgroups, top100 web  
pages, anonymous ftp and the most infamous of all IRC offer  
channels. 

IRC offer channels where originally started by groups to  
offer releases to their friends but when Fate (the  
leading Internet courier group in 1995) opened their  
channel (#fatefiles) to the public, Joe Lamer couldn't  
resist. Many people copied #fatefile's format (+mnst)  
and many of these channels failed, especially since  
most groups totally disapproved of IRC trading.  

CD RIPPING 

While the Internet changed the way the scene communicated 
and traded it was the gaming industry’s move to the CD Rom 
that also helped create the second scene revolution. While 
CD Rom titles for the PC have been around since 1989  
(Sierra/Dynamix) the scene did not take onto this new medium 
until the mid-nineties. And even at this time no one took it 
too seriously with many groups creating separate groups for 
the CD Rom releases. These seperate groups where usually  
created just to release crapware under a different label.  
And that is was CD titles where originally considered,  
crapware. These crapware groups where kind of like the  
IND releases today, though less anonymous.  

Originally these crapware/cd-rom groups would release the  
whole CD, but it wasn't in ISO format, rather the files were 
just copied off the CD. But people were not used to these 
large releases and so Hybrid invented the first cd-rip,  
where the group would leave out unnecessary parts of the  
game. But the rippers still had the mentality of the floppy 
disk: the smaller the better was the goal. So many games  
where raped to their bare minimum making them pretty boring 
to play. Playing some of these raped games was like trying 
to watch a special effects Hollywood blockbuster on a black 
and white TV with no sound. To add to this many ripped games 
were poorly cracked with a great number requiring third party 
utilities such has CD emulators (fakecd.exe).  

When software publishers started taking advantage of the  
space available on a CD Rom most of the main game groups 
agreed on a standard disk limit. On July the 6th 1996 five of 
these groups formed a pact agreement under the name of Software 
Pirates Association (SPA). The SPA's goal was to see the 
enforcement of their "rules of engagement". Any release that  
broke the SPA rules would be nuked on the affiliated sites.  
Eventually the SPA fell prey to internal fights created by  
group politics.  

In 1998 the SPA was laid to rest because the groups involved  
were simply not following the rules. But soon enough the big 
three groups (Class, Razor 1911, and Paradigm)formed a new 
organization called The Faction. The faction created a  
detailed listing of its rules and they released those rules 
to the public. The biggest change was the upping of the disk 
limit to 50*2.88 disks (it had been 75*1.44 disks).  
While other groups changed to the 2.88 disk format some did 
ignore the 50 disk limit and too many people it just didn't  
matter anymore.  

 
ISO SCENE (CD IMAGES) 

In 1997 the prices of CD writing material became cheaper, this 
combined with easier access to high speed internet created a new 
niche market. Full versions of games where wanted and so the 
ISO scene was created. ISO's are CD images and because they 
contain the complete CD image they are extremely big. Just  
like the CD scene three years earlier some of the bigger groups 
created new sub-groups for this ISO scene.  

By 1998 the ISO scene had grown. Gone were the days groups 
would dupe each others titles on different sites and not  
even realise it. Also gone where multistandards in releases.  
The scene may have been called ISO because that was the  
original format people used to store the information with but 
by 1998 everyone had switched to the bin/cue format. Also  
strangely we discovered in 1998 that some big name rip groups 
couldn't hack it in this ISO scene. While some others who  
fared terrible in the rip scene flourished in with ISOs.  
Probably the biggest controversy in the ISO scene for this year 
was whether groups should rip out Direct X etc to fit the image 
onto a standard 74min CD or weather to leave it as a full  
80+minutes (which required special CDs to burn properly).  

 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Bruce Sterling. The Hackers Crackdown, 1992. ISBN 0-553-56370-X 
Insane Creator Enterprises. Insanity, 1991. 
Reality. Reality Check Network, 1996. 
Steve 'Toast'. NFO Archive, 1995-98. http://www.uoguelph.ca/~shost/mail/mail.html 

Revision IV (200499) 
Scene History Composition, © 1998-9 by Ipggi. All rights reserved.