Capitalism, Communism… Universalism

Introduction

This is a post about Warez… How it used to be, How it is now, and how it should evolve. In the end, it’s a post about people interactions and feelings…

To put things into perspective for you, here is a post I once made about globalization. It goes like this :

“In a German factory in Dresde, built by romanian builders under the supervision of a french architect, using raw materials coming from morocco, some turkish workers where hitting the iron to make english bullets. These bullets where then transported on a belgium truc to a swiss airport where a luxembourgeois fret company made them arrive to the magnificent congo. Using russian kalachnikovs, made by afghany workers in a chinese factory, the almighty bullet launches and lodges itself tightly in the brain of a zairoi child”

Capitalism

This is the beauty of capitalism my friends. Don’t get me wrong, I do believe that the above statement is wrong. But set aside the human tragedy as an end result and concentrate on the human interactions. People trading goods and interacting with each other without really knowing the outcome or the presence of a global, more dominant picture.

This is the world of Warez today. People trading releases, originating from different locations, passing by different hands, being repacked, released, nuked, going back and forth between hundred and hundred of hands. Each person doesn’t really know who or what this service is doing to the other person next to him, what is he doing with it.

But it didn’t used to be like that. I am an old dog, that has been there since the beginning. Set aside the technological advances in speed and structure and rules which I won’t discuss in here (They are well documented), we have to observe the way it evolved.

The warez world used to be an exclusivity of the Scene members. People working hard to crack and hack their way to the top in some sort of capitalist pyramid. You contribute, we pay you back by letting you have access to the “best” stuff your piers did. The BBS’s, The TopSites, Ect. It all boils down to this… It’s not about security, it’s not about privacy, all of these are excuses to the real Capitalist Dilemma… It’s about access. Getting access to data when you didn’t do anything is just not an option for these fellas.

This was a tight world… There weren’t a lot of experienced people, not a lot of knowledgable people. Information was not spread, the world of warez has the equilibrium it needs.

Communism

Then came communism. The people with napster, with Kazaa, with Emule got knowledgable. They educated themselves. The media, the press, the news blogs did most of the job. They educated the masses of the true wonders of the warez world, the hidden societies, the skillz we needed to get in. You can take it or leave it, but they did most of the work to pump the “Scene” back to the top. More and more people started to learn, started to research, started to give back. Workers at the factories who had the Cd’s wanted in, kiddies in their basement who learned StarForce, Who learned Dox wanted in.

The rest of the masses, the ignorants who got informed, turned to communism. Why not share all the stuff that we have ? Why do we have to learn something to get something ? Aren’t we already contributing in our societies ?

For the vast majority of these people, Communism was the option. For those who got in, they still had those feelings, the sharing in perspective. The one that came from the Kazaa and Napster worlds. The Hapiness of seing your upload bandwith going up, meaning you are giving something to someone in the world you didn’t even knew. Do you see some globalization going on here ? I Do.

So communism didn’t replace capitalism, it added to it. The scene still existed, but the new breed that got in didn’t want to keep it all to themselves. They wanted to share, to give away. They knew that the doctors who were treating them in real life had something to give back, only it wasn’t in forms of “0s and 1s”. They knew that the mother in the house, taking care of the children and keeping them away from the streets had something to give too and that she deserved her little TV Series every week.

I should point out that the rare and negative side notes that you see resulting from such a mariage are horrible but necessary. You don’t have a happy couple without fights. But be sure that these are very rare and they shouldn’t ruin the hole deal for us. TopSites being busted because of P2P activity are Very rare. Kiddies leeching without giving away are also rare. They were kids and now they have grown, they know a thing or two about giving back.

The Start

We are at a turning point, at a crossroad my fellow pirates…

Communism was added to Capitalism and they are starting to merge… a hybrid is coming out… Universalism

A year or two ago, I started smelling a shift, a even better new breed of people. People who didn’t have access, but believed in the system. People who educated themselves at the hands of the scene but decided to choose another path. The children that we once where decided to take all the ideas of our parents and make them better.

Blogs started to appear here and there. Like mushrooms, the Direct Download Links multiplied. P2P Groups have not only come out of the closet, unannounced, but started beating the Scene groups in term of releasing by having exclusives. Racing releases and Credits are becoming less and less important. Normal people who aren’t in any groups started to release their collections, their packs of collected software and wallpapers, naming them nicely for other people to understand. Packs have been made to make it easier for the people to download huge collections. Series where being ripped with multiple audio and subtitles because some of us want to make use of it. Quality is no longer the master word that qualifies “The Scene” now as people are releasing more and more better quality data. The rules our fathers have gave us are not obeyed anymore and we explain our choices. High quality Rips, Full BluRay Dumps, It’s out there for everyone to the grabs.

The once ignorant people got connected, they have their own ideas now, their own needs to host, to share, to build private trackers.

The Future

We are at the beginning of this transformation my friends. We have still a long way to go. We are fixing our parent’s mistakes but making some of our own.

There is no more ONE place on the net, a top of a pyramid where you can get all the data released. You need P2P Access, you need Scene Access, you need People Access to collect it all. And this is Spectacular to understand.

The world of warez today is still plagued by competitions. Hidden competitions. Relations need to be made, access to private trackers need to be obtained. People talk about friendship but think invites. Money still plays a major role in short circuiting the upload and work load. People try to build around it, but having access is still considered a good thing, an important thing, and this has to go away !

We all need each other to exist. The scene cannot live without the P2P world. They need new blood, new experiences, they need people getting interested and cracking and doxing away. P2P can’t exist without the scene. Just as we leave the house and build one of our own, we are still tempted to visit and take comfort.

The goal my friends is Universalism. Let all this go away and mix it all up in one pot. Trackers open to everyone where the only rule is to be civil and contribute in a way that does not always relate to binary files. Ratios gone as long as no hit and runs happen. The scene, P2P groups, People, releasing to Usenet or some other place where everyone have access. No care for Racing, just quality. No more trouble as to uphold your ratio, no more wait times to download so that others can keep their status by seeding first. No more this unending circle of status and competition. Educating the people that leech on this, and letting them, little by little, evolve with the years to come till they start to give back.

The Future is Coming… Embrace it and live it at it’s most !