Slashdot Mirror
Inside the Shadow Internet
Paladin144 writes "Wired has a report about the mysterious 'pirate networks' that obtain new movies, music & games before they are released and spread them throughout the net. It's not as simple as putting a movie on LimeWire. These people are highly organized and very paranoid about secrecy. They maintain a hidden network of top-level FTP sites that get the best files first and allow them to trickle down the pyramid and into many a slashdotter's sweaty little fingers."
Well... I used to be apart of one of the pyramids, before I got caught.
I used to have access to the Distro section of an elite IRC channel, known across the net.
They would give movies to those few, who would then take them to the regular channel.
It's really crazy, and insanly hard to get in to, but you would get stuff very early.
Also, easier to get caught, as I found out.
Back in the day, these sites were run on BBSs whose phone numbers were non-published and which only a few people had access to. These days it's FTP sites, but the principle is the same. And frequently it's not their own FTP sites, but someone else's site which isn't properly secured, but this happens more at the lower levels.
Anyway, the networks run the same as they always have. You're either in or you're out. And most people are out.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
This article, and whoever it was they interviewed... really has some of these guys pissed off. http://www.vcdquality.com/index.php?page=nfo&id=46 020
Heh heh. I'm 33 and let me tell you a 'when-I-was-your-age' story... When I was your age, you weren't even born yet, me and some friends had two C64s and two Amiga 1000s set up in an apartment. Back then, you called long distance to the BBS of interest. We used all the phreaker tricks to get free phone calls. The phone company knows when you do this and when you exceed a certain amount of time, they come to get you. And they did. Heh heh. I wasn't there when it happened, I was the hardware guy. But anyways those were the days.
A "friend" of mine spent some time doing mp3 trading through several forums for a few years before Napster came out. Basically, he joined a niche channel on EFnet and got to know the regulars. I talked with them too -- they were really nice actually. Within a few months, he was a channel operator, was constantly invited to the "big" channels, and had access to a terabyte of mp3's (in 1997!) through various ftp servers. It's kind of like buying drugs -- you have to know when you've met the right people. Being really funny helps, too.
After all, I am strangely colored.
Haven't they? Premier DVDs are on sale now for $9.95, whereas just a year or two ago nothing was available for less than $20-25. IMO, publishers have realized that crappy Hollywood blockbusters that lots of people want to buy but nobody wants to pay for are prime targets for piracy. God knows I wouldn't pay $20 for a copy of Hellboy that I'd watch exactly once, but I'd more than likely download one. But I might pay $9.95 for one, especially if that's less than I would have paid in a theater the first time around.
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