You would never make a car
Following the initial dismay (and consequent short silence), the Scene became more active than before, forcing the FBI to admit its inability to counteract such a movement (now counting more than 200,000 members in Worldwide). It was around this, to bring the industry (film, music as gaming) to adopt an openly hostile attitude towards the pirates themselves: unable to solve the problem at its root -that is, blaming the leaders of pirateria-, the majors Americans simply decided to target anyone who exploited (indirectly) the illicit services of the Scene.The beginning of 2000 saw the alternation of a long series of accusations, processes and lawsuits focused on copyright; In 2004, for example, some 16,000 individuals were found to be theft (digital music) .
Clearly, it soon turned out to be a scarcely functional method: even excluding the strong backlash in the public image (dreaded, in certain terms, by the big entertainment companies), the effort to disincentive the piracy could only fail, being also unmanageable economical and timely). Again defeated, the Industry threw a new approach. As an alternative to the stick, it was attempted to adopt the carrot – primarily, through ubiquitous campaigns to raise awareness of the constant problem of piracy.
So the massive spread of spots began on the slogan of ” You would never make a car“products, and still used today – despite the seemingly dubious effectiveness (forcing paying customers to learn about an illegal alternative as free – of which they were even unaware – does not sound like the best strategy, but that’s all). It was not enough to put an end to piracy, however, with the second half of the last decade, however, the Scene ended up spontaneously with a progressive and inevitable decline.
Sunset
Warez Scenes soon imposed a standard, choosing to adopt a common content regulation / formatting of their releases (thus avoiding a long series of often-related piracy issues such as viruses or malware entering widespread software ).
Examining what the rival groups gave was a kind of tradition in the environment: to note suspicious files, malfunctions, incorrect / unnecessary content or similar irregularities was enough to challenge (in jargon, ” nukkare“) a release, inevitably affecting the reputation of the whole team.
Although the pirated content offered by Scena was the only one to boast of genuine security as authenticity and security, internet access allowed anyone to delight in the spread of illegal software: With the advent of new sources and tools – such as Napster , LimeWire or eMule – a new generation of pirates (mostly uninterested / unaware of the real origin of recoverable material on the web) gradually contributed to making Warez Scene perceived as less and less influential and necessary.
On the other hand, the Scene is certainly not known for its own interest in the final user (the pirate banal), remaining a thoroughly private and underground circle; Warez content offered by the sharing / torrent sites, for example, are not just banal leaks (material often “produced” by the Scene, but never actually intended for public dissemination).
In short, much of perpetual piracy on the web is still today the “scraps” of a large hacker community (generally, bitterly opposed to the public dissemination of its work) . In one way or another, the Scene lost its pseudo-monopoly on the software’s secret spread: the Warez Groups were seen side by side (by them) from the p2p Groups, a new reality in the field of computer piracy.
However, this was not the only reason behind the decline of the Scene. Although re-invented several times (from the small challenges of computing in the 80s to the globally interconnected communities of the ’90s), Warez Scene never stopped relying deeply on the competition: to test (and publicly display just talent) has always been the fulcrum of the phenomenon, in a sense. Nevertheless, the unstoppable progress in the world of information ended with seriously jeopardizing that particular attractiveness.
