01 апреля 2001

Демосцена

             Circulation Of Warez On Today's Scene
                      By Raver / Phantasy

Warez  warez  wareX  will  never  die!  Yeah  warez  are  a very
important part of our scene, that's what  we are working on  and
what  most  of all   makes up  a group's  image  and  prestige  
- it's stuff they release  and  it's  stuff  inspiring  all  the
others.    Now,  there  are  many  bad  points  about    today's
releases,   like  low  quality,  incompatibility   with  various
speccy  models,  use  of the Russian language and no support for
other disk systems other than TR-DOS,  but there is also another
thing I have been thinking about for  a while.

It's spreading

---------------

Despite fast data  communications available, warez  still spread
slowly or  just reaches  a few   friends of  the releasers.  The
scene  may  seem dead   from  time  to  time   only to   get  an
enormous amount of warez  a year  later, which  turns out  to be
old and surprisingly,   were  released  at  the time  you   were
dying to  see  something  new. What's   the fucking  problem?  I
guess it's  not because some  groups just don't  want to  spread
their stuff,   it's either  not possible  for them  or they  are
careless enough to hope their warez will reach everybody if they
send 'em to a couple  of their swapping contacts.

Couriers aka traders

--------------------

On the PC scene they are called couriers, on amiga and  consoles
they are considered to be traders (there's  a bit of  difference
too, but I'll  leave that until  later).  They're doing  the job
that  release  groups  can't  do  or  don't  feel  like   doing 
- spreading warez  around the world. And besides some good BBSes
and FTPs,  that's what  the speccy  scene needs.  Good organized
groups  of  spreaders   (yep,  at  least   a  couple  of   them 
-  competition raises motivation!) getting  warez directly  from
releasers or anywhere else and  getting them to the rest  of the
world. There has already been one couriering  group, Free Warez,
founded  by Arty Nooonzen.  He did a nice job getting some fresh
warez to the   scene FTPs which  could otherwise  reach  it alot
later or even  never, though this  project seems  to  be dead at
the moment.

Now, what would  a group of  speccy spreaders look  like? On the
PC, a  so called  courier  group  represents a  bunch  of people
with  lightning fast internet  connections and/or  (depending on
the  groups  profile)  the possibility   to   do   long distance
calls  to  the boards.  They usually  have  some  official group
or   groups   that  are   doing  the  spreading  for  them,   or
sometimes it's a  courier  division of  the releasing  group who
does  the  job.   On  Amiga,  there   are  no  real  courier (or
trading) groups,  there's seperate  people who are  traders  and
usually  that's   their  main   specialisation  in  their group.
Traders  can  be in   several groups  they  trade  for, but they
mostly trade ANY   stuff they get,  not only  releases  of their
groups.

In  my  opinion, a  mixture  of  these  two  could be  the  best
solution for  the speccy  scene. What  I mean  is courier groups
spreading ANY stuff  they get their hands on!

Spreadingroups

--------------

Are what we need! Really, I  would love to get new speccy  stuff
much  more often  than I  do. I've  never been  a great  swapper
though nor do I  like to scan  all 1000000000000 websites   just
to find out there  is nothing  new on  'em. I  guess that's  how
most sceners feel, except  some warez  decided maniacs...  which
should become the core of these brand new spreading groups!

Be  it  groups founded  specially  for warez  trading  or be  it
trading sections of release groups. They would always be getting
the latest releases  from  various  groups they  keep  in  touch
with, checking web resources for  new stuff, having contacts  or
members in  various active  areas of  the world,  who call their
local BBSes  or  get  warez straight  from  the  authors  there,
also  recieving a  lot of  stuff  thanks  to snailmail  swapping
and...  I guess  global  BBSes   and  FTPs is  the  media   they
should  be  spreading  stuff  on,   though  ofcourse   snailmail
swapping  is  also   a  useful  thing  for  both  spreaders  and
swappers.

Problems to solve

-----------------

Yes, unfortunately our warez spreading system isn't really ready
for such a thing at all. Though nowadays a lot of sceners access
the internet  already,  there  are  barely  any  good  archives.
But we need them, and not only as places to get all the  latest,
but  as evidence   of the past,   as a library   where  you  can
easily find  anything of  value from  the old  days. What  do we
have?

Bulletin board systems. None global except for The Yard which is
in it's infancy as  far as a speccy  scene  BBS goes -  not many
warez  online  yet   and  only   a few   sceners  calling.   The
rest  are unreachable  for people not  local to them.  Phreaking
isn't really popular  on speccy  and even  if somebody  would do
these  long distance  calls, these  boards aren't  worth it.  No
users,  small  archives,  tiny  activity.  Let's  stick  to  the
internet  boards  instead!  If  you're  interested  in   getting
familiar with  boards, try http://phantasy-hq.com/boards.html
File transfer protocol. If boards  are cool to keep up  with the
latest releases, then FTPs are  the best for huge archives   and
things are  a bit  better  with  them on  the scene   too. We've
got the immortal Acid  Nature  which  just died  but should   be
back soon enough, we've got   Mass Graves which,  with a  little
help of siteop Unbeliever, could become a real scene FTP.  Sadly
ones like  Sweet Confusion and Soul's  Storage are gone.   Let's
hope to  see more activity in this field.

World wide web. Demotopia and Virtual TR-DOS is what springs  to
mind when I hear the  three W's. They  are both  good  archives,
but except for  the party results  and wares on  Demotopia, they
would be  easier to  access and  more comfortable  to use  being
FTPs.  And  they are  of no  use to  spreaders since  they can't
upload anything there. Though  they can always  take  some stuff
there and   upload elsewhere  ofcourse, if   these webpages  are
fast enough to  beat FTPs on that!

Snail mail swapping. It's still  going strong as far as  I know,
and that's really cool. I  hope swappers keep the  good work up!
It's  very   important,  since  not  everyone   can  access  the
internet.   I   guess   there   should   be   some   snail  mail
swappers in a spreading group, so they can get fresh stuff which
wouldn't appear  on the  internet  any other  way. At  the  same
time, swappers will get comfort from spreading groups since they
will  get more  contacts  and the   ones which  will  always  be
able to send the newest and coolest stuff. Too bad  there are no
chapters  in   magazines  dedicated  to  swapping  -  containing
addreses  of people   willing to  swap. This  would make  things
easier when  trying to  find new  SMS partners   in your desired
area.

Just do it

----------

Yes again. It's  easy enough, just  don't give up  if  you can't
get into something in  10 mins. In fact, such  groups would  not
be necessary  if each one of  us would do  more spreading of our
own products,  and what   we get   from others.   We just   need
media. We need new boards and new FTPs and we need it now ;D