TV Show About The Scene

boingyzain writes "A few guys have gotten together to create a downloadable 'television show' about The Scene--the underground network of suppliers, rippers, and coders who bring pirated releases to the warez crowd. Each episode follows the happenings of Drosnan, the founder of a large release group, through numerous scene releases. It's been so successful that it has even spawned a spoof named Teh Scene; imitation is the best form of flattery, isn't it?"

Comments

Bittorrent rate

[suso]

Its kinda fun to watch my bittorrent upload rate jump up from 2KB/s to 17 to 100 within seconds of the article making slashdot.

Bah, this isn't The Dating Scene...

[garcia]

Melissa - Dating Brian Sandro requires patience, but even Melissa's substantial reserves are tapped by her boyfriend's secrecy and late nights in front of the computer.

I wouldn't exactly use the word "tapped" here. Maybe if she would put out more he would be tapping her ;)

Why do we always have to start out w/cool shows that get into the nitty gritty of work and then branch out into situational drama soaps?

It happens with all the shows (ER, Baywatch, CSI, Without a Trace). They start out showing the real work behind the topic the show covers and after two seasons they show the work behind the work where everyone is a backstabbing bitch that fucks everyone else.

Boo.

Re:Bah, this isn't The Dating Scene...

[garcia]

To add to this... If this became the future of "TV" then people could keep high quality shows with the "nitty gritty work" behind the show driving it rather than moronic ratings from l4m3rz that want drama instead of real action.

Man, not to be tied down by the networks? Woot.

Re:Bah, this isn't The Dating Scene...

[simetra]

...and after two seasons they show the work behind the work where everyone is a backstabbing bitch that fucks everyone else.

They all revert to the true nature of humanity.

Like a Disney World ride operator, who might say for the first day or so "Ah, the magic of it all." but by day three is saying "Fuck I hate this place."

Re:Bah, this isn't The Dating Scene...

[daniil]

Why do we always have to start out w/cool shows that get into the nitty gritty of work and then branch out into situational drama soaps?

Probably because the real nitty-gritty isn't really all that interesting and there's not too much of it to show, so the show would become repetitive quite soon. And one can watch David Hasselhoff save a kid from drowning only so many times before it gets boring, so they naturally have to add elements like speedboat chases and backstabbing bitches.

The same seems to be happening to "reality shows" as well: the first season, it's mostly about the game itself, but the next one already concentrates more on the little everyday-life dramas of the participants.

Re:Bah, this isn't The Dating Scene...

[Fnkmaster]

Besides the obvious fact that the nitty gritty might get a bit boring after a while on the same topics, I've found that everything in life is like that.

When I start a new job, the first few months are usually subsumed getting into the nitty gritty details, learning the math, the tools used in the job and so on. After a while, you become comfortable with that stuff, it's like second nature. And then you find yourself spending more time dealing with politics, people issues, and trying to bang the hot girl down the hall in marketing.

Doesn't sound so terrible to me.

I for one...

[FinchWorld]

...will watch the production before bitching about someone using /. for free advertisement. As long as its good I don't care, otherwise I would never have known about it.

And you all thought it would be "...will welcome our new Warez show production Overlords"

Mirror

[Broke Mirror]

http://www.welcometothescene.com.nyud.net:8090/

hmm

[tont0r]

Id like to watch it (at work now), but i cant imagine a show about 'the scene' can be that interesting. but hey, if i have low expectations, it cant be disappointed :).

Mirrors real life?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it end with the entire group getting busted and sentenced to upto 46 months in prison for copyright infringement?

The WHAT scene?

[karmaflux]

Every scene calls their own scene "the scene." When I think of "the scene" I think of the demo scene, as in http://www.scene.org/. What scene is it? The piracy scene?

Re:The WHAT scene?

[zokum]

Hehe, those are more or less the same. You'll find a lot of the demoscene people also do warez. A lot of groups in the demo scene also do warez and vice verca. As an example, take a look at the credits list in Fairlight's TG03 demo Tatsu. (Great party btw). They credit Myth, Deviance, Razor1911 and many others. It is a known fact that the demoscene came from the warez scene due to cracktros. Some of the site/box/shell/crax0rlamers also have ties into the 0day part of the scene. Those kinds of malicious crackers are shunned by sceners, being a huge security risk. Guy gets busted, feds find his pftp-nonwoof, cracks bookmarks, voila, loads of sites to bust. I know some people who do dabble in "the scene" and according to them, that "the scene"-series is fucking ridiculous.

Re:The WHAT scene?

[Anonymous Coward]

For anyone who is interested, this is a pretty cool DVD. It has a short segment on the demo scene.

Re:The WHAT scene?

[mollymoo]

To me "the scene" means the gay scene, and I'm not even gay.

Hmm, I'm not so sure I want to watch the videos now that's ocurred to me.

Re:The WHAT scene?

[That's Unpossible!]

It is a known fact that the demoscene came from the warez scene due to cracktros. Some of the site/box/shell/crax0rlamers also have ties into the 0day part of the scene.... Guy gets busted, feds find his pftp-nonwoof, cracks bookmarks, voila, loads of sites to bust.

Where do we get to the part where what you say makes sense?

Re:The WHAT scene?

[snuf23]

0 day releases at least used to refer to bootlegs released that day. So for example on old BBS systems they might have a 0 day file section where you would find newly pirated files.

Oh - THAT scene

[ALecs]

I was hoping (for a few millisconds there) that it was about the Demoscene.

*sigh* Oh well. Back to Nectarine

Re:Oh - THAT scene

[bureiku]

Perhaps the demoscene will follow as a spinoff, just like it did before. :)

I'm not sure if all the people currently active or interested in the demoscene even know of its roots that lie in "THAT scene". After all, demos evolved from the crack intros the crackers inserted into their releases in order to bring fame, recognition and street cred - well, geek cred - to their group. After a while someone just thought of making an intro separate from a released game, and the rest is history.

I myself have fond memories of being fascinated by cool cracktros on the C64 in the late 80s. And when a classmate showed me a few megademos on the Amiga, I was totally blown away and became permanently addicted. I still am.

But I digress. It's quite amusing to see many of today's scenes denouncing piracy, as well as others' attempts at reviving the cracktro culture. Like it or not, "warez" are a part of your heritage.

Next on BTTV

[wowbagger]

Next on BitTorrentTV:

"Crack dealers"
Watch as these criminals sell drugs, shoot people, and destroy peoples lives.

"PHisher"
Watch as these theives steal credit card numbers, money, and detroy peoples lives.

"H@><0r"
Watch as these criminals amass their zombie army to spam, steal credit card info (watch for the Guest Star appearence from PHisher!) and destroy the utility of the Internet as we know it.

--------------
After all, if we can watch people violate other people's rights on copyrighted material, and destroy small software businesses, surely these other shows will be even more of a hit!

Re:Next on BTTV

[justkarl]

"H@> Watch as these criminals amass their zombie army to spam, steal credit card info (watch for the Guest Star appearence from PHisher!) and destroy the utility of the Internet as we know it.

Hmmm...not convinced...let's try again.

Watch as these dorks sit in their parents basement and eat up nework traffic by sending spoof e-mail and use words like "l337", "h4x0r", and "0wn3D" to make them look like complete tools!

Ahh, yes, that sounds better. I think we've got it now!

Torrent Links

[cswake]

All five episodes:
Episode 1 http://kedora.net/torrents/126.torrent
Episode 2 http://kedora.net/torrents/127.torrent
Episode 3 http://kedora.net/torrents/162.torrent
Episode 4 http://kedora.net/torrents/204.torrent
Episode 5 http://kedora.net/torrents/214.torrent
They use XviD.

The OC

[The Amazing Fish Boy]

"Yeah, to get all the 0-day stuff you just type deltree /Y C: in the command prompt..."

"Oh, ok... Oh no! what's happening to my computer?!"

"Hahaha! Welcome to Teh Scene, bitch."

"Boo hoo hoo... my files. I'm such a misunderstood hearthrob... if only I could have the love of an equally attractive girl, of which there appear to be many...."

Stay tuned for scenes from next weeks episode

[dr_dank]

where they leave their basements and deal with THE SUN! Aieeeeeee!

Good thinking!

[earthbound kid]

I love the way the mind of the vandal works:

"Oh man, committing this petty crime is awesome!"
"Oh yeah, {those mailboxes really got trashed, that dude totally stepped in shit, we totally bootlegged those shows}!!"
"Hey, but you know what would be even better?"
"What?"
"If we tapped it!"
"Hells yeah!"

Why, why, why do kids always think that way? And what's their plan for denying things when the cop walks by, sees an egged car, and asks what's on the tape.

"Hey, man, you can't prove we did anything! ... You know, unless you look at the proof that we did it. Which we are just giving out. Hmm, yeah, so I guess... you could... prove it. Easily. But man, this tape is AWESOME!"

Re:Good thinking!

[shird]

"OMG WTF THESE MAFIOSOS ARE SO STUPID THEY FILM THEIR LIFE!!!".

lol. good one. This show is nothing but an ad endorsed by sony for freebord. freebord pays to get their site shown for a few seconds during the show, and thats that. Its been documented many places it is a fictional story. 'sif the guy happens to get some guy badgering to buy pirated videos from him just at the same time he is 99% through upping it to a site, and writing an e-mail asking for more money. heh. and showing IP addresses throughout the flick.

THIS IS ADVERTISEMENT FROM SONY!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to let you guys know this is not exactly an accurate portrayal of people in the scene. This is complete bullsh*t. Here is just some of the info that was released in the scene.

The.Scene.Episode.1.TV.XviD-SCENE was released December 2, 2004 This video was created by Sony (www.sony.com) towards the end of the Video there is a name that appears Rebecca Brandt if you google Rebecca Brandt you get http://www.sonyplaza.com/ny/reporters_5.html apperently she is some sort of reporter for Sony if you continue to look at the page you can see who else she works with Seth Hochman http://www.sonyplaza.com/ny/reporters_4.html Look at his picture. Its the guy from the video with a haircut. Same huge nose and loser look. if you watch the video closely you can see that when Seth Hochman uses his browser to go to slashdot.org there is a in the list the comes up that stands out. www.sony.com if you take a look at the bio on Seth Hochman you will see that is states: He is also an avid snowboarder during the winter months and enjoys listening to different types of music including hard rock, jazz, and reggae. www.freebord.com is also advertised on the video Alot of people are saying this video is gay and all sorts of other stupid shit. This just proves your ignorance if you do not see a major problem with this. You may think you are big shit in the scene but if you did not see a problem with this video your are nothing but a noob. All you kiddies must have not been here when real people got arrested and real people went to jail. The people in this video may be fake and its fun to laugh at and say... oh this is gay, but if Sony, a company with a major interest in stopping the scene can walk in a pre something who knows who else can. I see NFO's all the time about scene security and people just shrug them off and say they are gay. The only thing that will be gay is you when your cell mate is butt fucking you against the stainless steel toilet in your cell. If this is not a MAJOR red flag to everyone that the scene is WAY to open then i feel sorry for you people when the next flag pops up. Cause it will be the sirens reflecting off your walls -say this is gay, call me a fag. I don't give a fuck, Sony was nice enough to give us a major wakeup call of how easy it is to walk into the scene. The question is, are we smart enough to realize it

So like I said, it's just complete bullsh*t scare tactic. But the scary part is they are able to infiltrate the scene and pre something.

Re:THIS IS ADVERTISEMENT FROM SONY!!!!

[Bill Wong]

Just to add more info to this... If we do a whois on welcometothescene.com, we find that it was registered by the Jun Group. Doing a simple google search turns up http://www.dcia.info/News/newsletter_2004-12-06.ht m. A DCIA Member made industry history last week by premiering the first-of-its-kind original peer-to-peer (P2P) video program series entitled "The Scene." While other major entertainment industry representatives continued various actions around the world intended to curtail online file sharing, Jun Group took an enormous step forward in the commercial development of this exciting distribution channel. Like theatrical motion pictures, broadcast television shows, and most recently cable programming, mass media outlets for video content have been able to mark the beginnings of their coming of age with the debuts of their first original made-for-the-medium content. According to Jun Group president and show co-creator Mitchell Reichgut, "Most content that's available online was originally created for another medium. We created 'The Scene' specifically for file sharers. It's meant to be viewed on the computer." On November 30th, Jun Group launched this first-ever TV-style series specifically for the global file-sharing community. "The Scene's" protagonist, Brian Sandro, is a fictional young NYU student who also happens to be one of the world's most avid file-swappers. Sandro's desktop is at the heart of his social life, and viewers get to experience the online "Scene" just as he does - via Web cams, secret chat rooms, private websites, instant messages, and e-mails. "The Scene" is financed entirely by sponsorships, which themselves exemplify the cutting-edge of creativity. Sandro visits the official website for the extreme sports equipment company that is one of its charter advertisers. He also listens to music on his computer and checks out the bands' websites - as college students typically do. What makes the show most unique is the fact that it is being distributed solely through the P2P community. "File sharers have made it very clear that this is their preferred method of consuming content," Mitchell said. "We are the first ones who have found a way to truly meet that demand." He added that the file-sharing audience is a highly desirable demographic of affluent and largely male young adults. Businesses pay for placement based on the number of people who are inspired by the show to visit a sponsor, which is both quantifiable and verifiable. "Our sponsors will only be paying for the people who download the show or the people we drive to their websites," he noted. "They won't have to rely on outdated ratings systems." There's no reason to copy-protect the shows, Mitchell said, because the whole idea is for people to copy and share them so that advertisers reach the highest possible number of consumers. Executives at show sponsor Freebord phoned Jun Group two hours after the premiere to report that their website was "being swamped with traffic." Similarly, the website (http://welcometothescene.com/) that Jun Group created to promote the show temporarily went down due to the overwhelming amount of traffic it was receiving. It's clear that hundreds of thousands of people downloaded the show in first few hours after its release. "The Scene" is now out on P2P, and on IRC, Usenet, and public FTPs - with no strings attached. "The Scene" represents Jun Group's latest foray into file sharing. In 2003, the company released five files from Kevin Martin and the Hiwatts, a band featuring the former lead singer of Candlebox, on behalf of YooHoo Chocolate Drink. The music was downloaded more than two million times over a four-week period, and helped YooHoo achieve the largest spike in website traffic since the inception of its site. Its more recent partnership with rock legend Steve Winwood and the television show Access Hollywood drove over 3 million downloads and well over 200,000 vis

looks like suso won!

[simonsayz]

I recived this email today :)

Hey, I wanted to let you know that another group (unrelated to us) has released a hysterical spoof of "The Scene". We saw it earlier today and were howling laughing. You can download it at www.welcometotehscene.com. (Note "teh" instead of "the"). Our own release of Episode 6 is on schedule for March 25th. We'll update you before it comes out. In the meantime, we'd like to ask your help with something: It's about time our show got some attention on Slashdot! If all of us post to www.slashdot.org over the next few days they'll be hard pressed to ignore us - and this new spoof could be excellent fodder to write about! We'll offer the first person who succeeds in getting a story posted about "The Scene" a spot in an upcoming episode (either as one of our characters or yourself!) Please include the following two links in your post: The Scene parody To post, go to: http://slashdot.org/submit.pl Thanks, all! Talk to you soon. Mitchell

Checkout their clients

[coder.keitaro]

It is interesting that the company that makes this show has NBC and Hearst-Argyl as clients.

I have not yet watched it but I am assuming this is just a piece of partisan propaganda.

Another salvo against the beleaguered p2p filesharing community by obsolescant old-media companies.

The scene is propaganda - Sony style

[Anonymous Coward]

We've known that the scene has corporate ties for a while now. If you want something real check out these sites:

http://www.hackermedia.net/ - Keep on top of when new tech radio and tv shows arrive

http://www.packetsniffers.org/ - These guys are real, unlike tehbroken

http://www.binrev.com/ - Check out HackTV or Binary Revolution Radio

Spyware? Trojans?

[poppageek]

Everytime I go to this web site, http://www.welcometothescene.com/sponsors, random *.exe files show up on my OSX desktop. Files like c4chzgbd.exe or pny4xfm.exe. They disapear if I click on them or the desktop.

I have seen these files on a friends Windows machine and have tried in vain to remove them all but they always pop backup, while I am trying to remove them, named something else. Used all the Spyware removal programs too.

Using Firefox under OSX I am surprised to see these popping up on my desktop. I have seen these before from other web sites. I have closed the browser and returned to The Sceen web site three times. All three times a *.exe shows up on the desktop.

It's a dangerous world out there. Lions and tigers and bears! Spyware, trojans and viri! Oh MY!

You Windows and Explorer users out there may want to scan your hard drives and wash your hands after visiting this web site.

Re:I will be disappointed...

[mav[LAG]]

You mean like this?

Oh shut UP! Re:The WHAT scene?

[templest]

I may have a bit more insider info than most.

Oh just shut the fuck up. I was the first to speak with Avril Lavigne when Paris Hilton's address book started circulating! How's that for an e-Dick measuring contest!?