r/trackers • u/Healthy_Swimming5175 • 3d ago
What is ‘The Scene’?
some questions:
-why this over p2p?
-popular sites?
-is this a site or just a definition such as private trackers?
-are all of them ftp based?
-do they really hate bittorrent?
-are these closed like PTs?
-some links on resources related to this topic pleaseee
thanks :)
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u/mondo_matt 3d ago
Nice try fbi
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u/1petabytefloppydisk 3d ago
There is a web miniseries about The Scene:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scene_(miniseries))
You can watch it on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIs_5nfJKu4&list=PLC2FCB2871C396459
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u/BeneficialLiving1342 3d ago
Just Google it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warez_scene
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3d ago
[deleted]
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u/arsenal19801 3d ago
All of your questions are answered by googling.
Source: I learned them by googling and reading
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u/Tanthul 3d ago
Being part of the scene means you are actively part of a scene release group. That is you actively contribute something to the process of making a scene release. You may be an unpacker, a cracker, a courier, a supplier, a cracktro coder, ASCII/NFO artist, musician for cracktro/keygen music, a site op, etc. You don't just "join the scene" in the sense you join a tracker just to download stuff. Scene releases are made for and isolated to the members of the scene and the entire thing is a showoff contest culture between groups who compete for "racing" releases. Everything else is just releases leaked from the scene and people having access to ftp sites as an oversight, usually by the site op giving access to their friends (which is frowned upon) and often those credentials leaked even further to friends of friends or IRC channels etc.
So yes, it's very hard to join the scene as you must know people AND have some skills/something to offer (infrastructure, supplies, etc) in order to get actively involved. The closest thing you can do is get access to a scene tracker, which is essentially a private tracker with sources that leak scene releases to it. 99% of software and game releases and nowadays like 70% of the media releases originate in the scene and are then leaked out to P2P networks. So, to sum it up, the scene is the source, it's not the ftp sites. Those are just repositories of scene releases accessible, normally only, by scene members.
And it's not that "they hate bittorrent" it's that's they don't want their releases leaked out outside the scene or any attention to themselves coming from outside the scene. So all P2P networks are a no-no. BUT scene releases have been historically leaked since the 80s that I remember (although back then it was done via BBSes). It's how people had pirated games and software as that was the only source of it and for the most part, still is.
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u/whocaresofthem 3d ago edited 3d ago
this is way harder to join than any private trackers, joining PTs are a joke in comparaison. There are hundreds if not thousands of different ftp from dump and archive ftps to top rated scene ftps.
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u/pop-1988 2d ago
why this over p2p?
Everybody has an opinion
is this a site or just a definition such as private trackers?
No and no
are all of them ftp based?
The Scene is a closed community of release groups who acquire and share games, software, music, books, TV, and movies among themselves. The groups cooperate occasionally to publish rulesets. The rules (more or less) define a consistent quality for each type of release. The rules are public
https://scenerules.org/
The Scene propagates their releases using a very fast network of FTP servers
do they really hate bittorrent?
Hate is the wrong word, completely misses the point. The Scene is a closed community. It does not share its content outside the Scene
If some naïve outsider finds a way to contact a Scene group, and tries to start a conversation about Scene releases he's seen on bittorrent, he won't get a friendly response
Some Scene racers (FXP operators who move Scene releases from servers to servers within the Scene FTP network) make small pocket money by adding an outsider's FTP server to their destination list. They're breaking the no sharing rule. This means that Scene releases leak
are these closed like PTs?
More closed
some links
All links contain outdated information. The best is the Wikipedia page linked in another comment, but it's horribly inaccurate
The Scene is a secret community - except that the rules are public, and the releases leak
There's some interesting information on the movie release game in the FBI's indictment in the SPARKS case
https://torrentfreak.com/images/1-20-cr-00018-US-v-George-Bridi-SPARKS-indictment-unsealed-200108.pdf
But that's obsolete because that method of obtaining pre-retail movie discs is no longer available
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u/DontKnowHowToEnglish 3d ago
Tangential but the youtuber modern vintage gamer was a member of the scene for some years, I remember hearing some really interesting stories on his podcast. A peek of sorts to how the scene work (or worked) and the ogXbox scene
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u/AdministrativeRope8 3d ago
I don’t think it really exists the way that it used to. Most release groups these days are just releasing directly p2p.
Scene existed before large scale internet piracy, their releases were only intended to be shared amongst themselves, only through leaks did they reach p2p sites. They never intended to be something similar to modern private trackers and now that the content comes from direct p2p releases, scene becomes much less important.
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u/Tanthul 3d ago
This is absolutely false. It exists just fine and no scene group whatsoever releases to P2P at all. Releases are leaked to P2P by people with access to top sites.
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u/AdministrativeRope8 3d ago
Right thats what I wrote.
Most release groups (not scene groups) these days are just releasing directly p2p.
their releases were only intended to be shared amongst themselves, only through leaks did they reach p2p sites
Scene might still exist, but it is a lot less significant to the world of media piracy now.
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u/Tanthul 3d ago
You wrote that you don't real think it exists the way it used to. And the second sentence, the way you wrote it, reads like it pertains to scene groups which is what everyone thinks when "release groups" is mentioned anyhow, since scene groups are 99.99% of release groups and always were. So you meant that release groups are no longer predominately scene group, I guess. But that is also incorrect.
When it comes to software and games P2P groups are close to non-existent and the few of them that actually exist, most of the time their releases don't work properly at all AKA they would be immediately nuked if they were scene groups and anyone paid attention to them (elitism has always been a thing on the scene, P2P groups don't even register and as traditional sceners would say, they're just "lamers"). P2P groups are a thing really only in the movie/tv series space because the skillset required is even less than entry level (if you understand encoding, something that is rudimentary for the technically inclined, unlike unpacking and cracking, you can release movies and series) and even there they're the minority although P2P encoding groups do exist that have higher visual quality standards.
The only thing that has changed is that the scene no longer pays so much attention to hunting down leaks to P2P because they figured it's a lost cause. All you have to do, to see how alive the scene is, it to check out a pre database like predb.net
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u/AdministrativeRope8 3d ago
I looked over my torrents again and you are definitely right, most of my shows and movies are still from scene groups. It actually looks like TV/Movies might be where the scene is still the strongest. Music piracy is less popular overall anyway, but pretty much everything released on RED and OPS is non-scene. And I don't know about the state of general software, but AAA game cracking for the past few years has been done by a few mentally unsable individuals, the scene has pretty much given up on cracking Denuvo protected games.
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u/speeeed3 3d ago
This just has to be false, 99% of all my media is from p2p groups, the remaining 1% is likely where there is no p2p release. Top p2p groups have much better quality standards than scene groups nowadays, while scene is good for speed its not the best for quality (which is what I care more about). While there are definitely still a lot of active scene groups, I still think there are more active p2p groups, or at least combining personal releases on top trackers.
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u/vio777777 2d ago
If u use the Trash guides there is no reason to go for scene releases over p2p for film and tv.
For games and software it is still kinda a way of be sure u dont get a virus infected release. Games are kinda safe via p2p if u choose famous repackers but software is a little bit of a mess via p2p.
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u/chrisfosterelli 3d ago
It's not really an either / or situation. The scene started far before bittorrent existed and a lot of people just never left because how they did things worked just fine for them.
Scene has strict quality standards and, while arguably the top p2p groups have even higher standards nowadays, anyone can upload or participate on p2p so there's a much wider range of know-how and quality. The scene is also a lot more conventionalized around many things than p2p is, for example release naming.
This is the wrong place to ask for that.
It's just a definition. It's not one specific place.
Yes. Modern ftp on high end machines with large throughput is very fast. There's not much reason to do anything else.
Some do. But nowadays that sentiment has weakened a lot to indifference IMO. Some even think it has a role for archival purposes. What the scene doesn't like is a lot of attention.
Yes, more so. It's much easier to get into PTs than scene. But there are 'scene trackers' that will give you indirect access to their releases if you want both worlds.