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."
So that's what George W. Bush meant by "internets"... he's part of it and he let it slip out!
As far as I can tell, this story was about (or planted in support of) a P2P-distributed miniseries called "The Scene". Sponsored by Sony, this fake docudrama takes a member of one of these 0-day groups from someone who just wants to share, to someone getting paid to supply DVD pirates with video, and probably eventually to his being caught and prosecuted.
You may flame me for saying this but i really like the steam network, i personally bought Half-life 2 in retail and had some troubles getting it to work (took 4 hours).
Still i think the steam network works and is a great way to store your games and have access to them from anywhere. I do have one thing that worries me and that is when valve decides to shutdown the steam servers or remove some games, those games will then be unplayable without some sort of release from valve or some sort of crack. Also i feel sorry for those people that would like to play HL2, who dosnt have internet access, i think valve should have done something for those people.
Summary: IMO the steam network is a good idea but HL2 should be able to run without it like the original HL.
...especially Apple
How do you find out there's a _good_ copy and what its name is?