Disclaimer

This faq is for informational purposes only. Using or downloading pirated software is ILLEGAL.

The Current State of the Law: The Copyright Act of 1976 (17 U.S.C §101 et. seq.) generally makes it a Federal offense to reproduce any copyrighted material. A copy of a digital work may exist in either RAM or magnetic medium. It is legal for a software owner to make copies for their personal archival purposes. There is 3-year statute of limitations on any claim for copyright infringement (17 U.S.C. §507(b)). Conduct occurring outside the US is not protected under the Copyright Act (which is why warez CD sellers are usually located abroad).

What is this page? Well I've had some friends that were on fast Internet connections that wanted to get the good stuff, but they didn't know how. So I wrote this page to help them out, and now I'm sharing it with more people. Well so you want to run Warez? Just a word of warning, Warez are not for everyone I'm sure we all know a few people that if they had a CD full of pirated software that they would loan it to everyone. This will get yourself into some big time trouble.

Well like most of us when we first started we started searching web pages for linked warez and such, but you soon realize that this takes long periods of time (and sucks) and is really boring as shit. So if you want to get the good stuff? Then this is what your going to have to do. What all do you need to know and what do you need to do it? First you have to have time and a half way powerful computer. (yes you can set up a FTP server on a week system) Second your going to need a few extra peace's of software and they are easy to find. First your going to need a way to get the scoop on what all new stuff is out and where to get it. So you use an IRC (Internet Relay Chat) client called Mirc easily found at www.mirc.com once you set it up with some basic information then you can connect to a IRC server and your able to chat with the rest of the world. Here is a good look at what all you will see on a good night IRC. But this is only just a part of what you need. Once you find where the goodies are at your going to need to go and get them. This is where your going to use a FTP client to connect to somewhere on the net and start to download what you what. I recommend CuteFTP 2.0 or WSFTP (CuteFTP is what I have been using for over 2 years now) but you make your own choice.

IRC

Lets take a look at one of the setup boxes on IRC OPTIONS Under Nick that's what you will be known as once you on IRC, don't worry you can change it. Just make sure you choose something original, with over 10,000 people using IRC most any name you choose will have all ready been taken. Once your up and running on IRC you'll need to know where to go to find the goodies. You can do a list of channels but if your on a Undernet or EFnet server this will take some time. Because there are always over 6000+ people on IRC at all times, so you can imagine just how many channels are listed, on a good night up to 5000+ channels. So you will need to limit your channel listings down to minimum of 20 people, this will knock a lot of the extra junk but you will still have to look at a bunch. Also you can just limit your search just for one word if you want, for example you can just list channels that have the word "warez" in it. This is only at first once you learn what your looking for, you will cut right threw the chase and go right to the channel you want. I'd say a few good channels to start with would be: #warez, #warez4free, #zeraw, #m8leech. Don't  worried if your over whelmed by all the channels most are crappy and you will find the ones you like to hang out in. If you find yourself in a channel that you can not chat in but only watch the text then you have found yourself into a XDCC channel. This can good if your on a high speed connection or bad if your on a dial-up modem. You know when your there because you'll get stuff that looks like this: XDCC. (Just a word of warning, please don't use colors while on IRC, it's so annoying.)

XDCC

Lets break this line down a little bit to understand what all your looking at

<BRW-DCC2> ( 1) [ 15x / 29.4m ] [BRW] CLS-Quake 2 [1/3] 5K Min
<BRW-DCC2> ( 2) [ 10x / 29.2m ] [BRW] CLS-Quake 2 [2/3] 5K Min
<BRW-DCC2> ( 3) [ 5x / 28.1m ] [BRW] CLS-Quake 2 [3/3] 5K Min
 

"BRW-DCC2" is the name of the user (or BOT) that is offering the goodies. The (1) is the packet number, this guy his Quake2 broken down into 3 packets because its a little to handle when it's broken down instead of one 90 meg file. The [15x/29.4m] is more packet information, the 15x is telling you just how many times that the packet has been attempted to down loaded and the 29.4m is telling you just how large the packet is. [BWR] is just telling you what BOT is giving you this packet, this is just junk information. The "CLS" is the hacker group that hacked Quake 2, CLS stands for Class (very good group).  The [1/3] is telling you what packet it is, this is the first out of three. So now that you understand what all that is telling you, you want to download it. The "5K Min" is telling you that you need to maintain at least 5K per second download or it will drop you. And most bots will not let you resume broken downloads. Well this is the basic command that you will need to type at the channel:

/msg user xdcc send #?

Oh yea in some cases the user name is case sensitive and you must get it exact, you can look at the status window for information on what is going on when you enter that data. Such as all packets slots are full. The BOT can only send out so much information at one time due to bandwidth. Also sometime if the xdcc does not work, and it will tell you if it does not work you might be able to try using ctcp in place of the xdcc.

File compression

File compression, why is it used? Well this is very simple do you want to spend more time then you have to, too download what you want? NO! So why in the hell when you download warez do they break the program up into so many 1.44 meg files? Well this dates back to the days of the BBS's (bulletin board systems), when you only go as fast as your modem. Back in those days programs were a hell of a lot smaller and it was not such a big deal to just copy/backup the programs to floppy. Well today it's a different story games are over 80+ 1.44 megs files and they have sound and animation add-ons which make it even larger in most all cases. So who really wants to spend hours copying all that to floppies? (Shit you would have a hard time just finding 80+ good floppy disk now days.) Enough with the history lesson, why still use 1.44 meg files instead of just zipping it up into one 100 meg file? This is easy also, what if you have a bad CRC right in the middle of that 100 meg file? Well your shit out of luck. So if you have a bad CRC in one file out of 80 files, well it's a lot easier just to redownload that one file. (Then the problem comes in finding that one missing file.)

Okay now you have found your goodies and you have downloaded them now you have to extract them. Their are 3 major forms of data compressions used on warez: ZIP, RAR, ARJ, ACE. so your going to have to use some DOS knowledge and D/L some extraction tools because these are not built into your operating system. WinRar is one of the first you will need this will located at WinRar. WinRar is a graphical user interface with a 32-bit program that uses Rar. This extracts files that are compressed using RAR. After installing that you will need WinZip. This is another 32-bit GUI version of whats normally a DOS program but this one will handle long filenames just like WinRar. While DOS versions will not. But still with all this GUI data compression software you still cant get away from DOS because in most cases it's faster using the DOS version of pkunzip if your trying to decompress lots of files at one time. And this is located at Pkz204g.exe. And on top of all that there is still ARJ but some RAR and ZIP programs will handle ARJ also. One of the newest data compressions being used is called Ace, it is used much like the orginal Dos version of Rar, It offers the highest level of data compression.

So how do you know what program to use on what? You have to take a look at file extensions. (This process will take up some hard drive space and temp directories.) What your looking for is the first file that starts the compression. Lots of times they will tell you what to use to extract it inside the main NFO file. But the other half of the you just have to figure it out.
 

File extension	Data compression	Program to use
.ZIP	Zip file	Winzip
.RAR	Rar file	WinRAR
.001	Rar file	WinRAR
.000	Rar file	WinRAR
.ARJ	ARJ file	ARJ for DOS or WinRAR
.ACE	Ace file	Unace.exe or Ace32.exe

After you figure out what file compression extraction software to use, before you extract the data you'll need to create a temp directory somewhere, this is where you'll extract the data to for now. If your dealing with a very large number of ZIP files most of the time it's easier to just to use the DOS version of pkunzip. The command you will need to use in DOS looks something like this, once your in the directory where the ZIP's are located, "pkunzip *.zip where", where is the destination of where you want the ZIP's to be extracted to. Your not finished there, in about 98% of the time most warez are compressed twice. This is where most of the NFO files are located, at this point you need to start reading them. Your only looking for one main NFO file, most of the time it's the largest one. The rest are just junk files. (So why are they there? I don't know) In most cases warez are compressed using RAR, this is because RAR will compress data the smallest.
 

FTP

Okay now lets say that you have found a FTP site that you want to download stuff from lets take and break down this information. Using this as an example: 204.225.60.28:554 L/P:warez

Okay using your FTP program under user and password you will enter "warez" for both the number 554 is the port number if they do not give you a port number, then it is just default or port 21, in most cases just leave it blank and your fine. The 104.225.60.28 is the site, so after putting this information in, you should just be able to connect. If you get an error that says "site is closed" then the FTP site is up and running but is not allowing any users to enter at the moment, you can try back a little bit later and you might be able to get in. If you get an error that says "site is full or no more connections" then the maximum number of people has been reached. Most FTP sites have limits set for the maximum number of users so that they can keep the bandwidth speeds up.

So you think your fast enough to run your own FTP site? Well this is what you will need, a semi fast computer and a large hard drive and on good fast connection to the net. At least ISDN or faster. Once you have that you will need  FTP server software, this is freeware in most cases. If you using 95 then there is two main FTP server software used, WARFTP and Serv-U. WarFTP has more options and is the number one FTP software used but if you want to start off easy just use Serv-U, you can have it up and running in no time. Just make sure when you set it up that users cant access your root on your C:\    (Remember the world of warez is a give and take system so someday it's all ways nice to open up your own free leech FTP site just for kicks)

Well now that your downloading a bunch of this new stuff your probley going to need some serial numbers or cracks. Those pages come easy, just do a search for serial numbers. Any software that is older then 2 weeks are considered old warez in lots of cases. Yes there are programs that you all ways be able to find due to the popularity and the demand for them. But some software you will almost never be able to find once they become old warez.

Newsgroups

Usenet: Yes there are plenty of warez to be found on newsgroups also. (One of the best news group reader software I think is FreeAgent) There are many other newsgroups involved in the warez scene. By looking at the groups that messages are cross posted to, you can get a good idea of where the action is. Most all service providers will have their own news server, but they only have a small server, they might not offer all 35,000+ news groups due to bandwidth. Some groups like Alt.binary.cd.image require very larger and powerful servers and lots of bandwidth. You might have to subscribe to a real news group provider such as "supernews" or "giganews" these speciatly news servers are equipped to handle the full array of all the news groups. And they normally archive the data for longer periods of time. Example "giganews" stores online all the alt.binary.* for 2 weeks, while most smaller providers only hold it for up to 3 days.
Some of the better groups are:

alt.2600.warez
alt.binaries.cracks
alt.binaries.cracks.phrozen-crew
alt.binaries.misc
alt.binaries.pictures.leek
alt.binaries.pictures.utilities
alt.binaries.warez
alt.binaries.warez.ibm-pc.d (discussion group)
alt.binaries.warez.ibm-pc
alt.binaries.warez.ibm-pc.dos
alt.binaries.warez.ibm-pc.old
alt.binaries.warez.mac
alt.cracks
alt.warez
alt.warez.ibm-pc.apps
alt.warez.ibm-pc.games
alt.warez.ibm-pc.old

Pro's and Con's to warez

• Most of the time you don't get everything that you would get if you bought the software, like the books and manuals that come with the software. Sometimes those really help out a lot.
• You don't get the software support that you would get if you owned it, like online help and tech support.
• You didn't have to pay $50 for some game that was not worth more then $2
• You can learn how to use software that you could never afford (Example: Microsoft's Softimage sells for $7,000+)
• If companies didn't want their software to become warezed then they should have put better software protection on it.
• Try before you buy, like shareware but you get to see everything. I've seen some games that were cool at first but later sucked, and the shareware version stopped before it got that far.
• Easy to catch a virus or mess up your O/S
• You don't have to wait till the item comes out on store shelves
• It's Fun!
• Your computer gaming magazines become just about useless because they rate the games after they come out, and in most cases you have it before they do.
• When a game is hacked they take out a lot of good stuff, like the animations and music.

• NFO: This is normally found as a  text file inside of a Zip'ed file, this is instructions that you need to read to install the warez. But lots of time they are just junk information. But be careful to look over it before you just delete it.
• DIZ: This is a small text file that you also find in a Zip'ed file, normally it just tells you what you have, most of the time it's just the name of the program and how many disk it is.
• Unix/Lynx: These are common operating systems that are at the backbone of the internet, some knowledge of them will help you out, but you really dont need to know them. (but it helps)
• Ratio: These are setup on FTP sites so you have to upload stuff to them before you can download, these suck! Its so that the person that runs the site all ways gets new goodies. If you do upload to the site you need to understand the ratio first. Sometimes its setup for 1:4 sometimes 1:10 what this is telling you is that for every one meg of information that you upload you can download 4 megs. You need to follow the siteops directions when uploading and only upload what they want. Most of the time if send them something they want or something brand-new then they will be happy. If you piss them off they will kick you off there site. And they dont care!
• UL and DL: UL stands for upload and DL stands for download. Upload is when you send them information while Download is when you get information from them.
• Leech: This is what most of us are, this is when you only take and never give. Remember the world of warez is a give and take world. But there are lots of free leech FTP sites out there.
• Fserver: This is a small text driven FTP site that is directly connected to mirc, its like using DOS directly on mirc to download files. Normally these are slow and a pain in the ass to use, but what ever works to get what you want.
• Bandwidth: The amount of data that can be transferred over a network connection. If you think of the network as a sewage pipe, the bandwidth can be thought of as the area of the cross-section: the wider the paper, the faster "information" will flow. Many use the phrase wasting bandwidth to refer to "information" that takes up more flow then it deserves. For example a T1 is 1.5 megs per second while a T3 is 45 megs per second. If your on a high speed connection then you dont have too much to worry about but if your on a modem, then you can forget trying to get large goodies.
• BOT: This is not a real person but a software program that acts like a real person on IRC, they are uses to control many things on IRC such as channel take overs and auto OP'ing when a channel op enters the channel.
• LAG: This is how long it takes for information request to reach the server, like a ping of sorts. For example when you type on IRC an you hit enter and it takes a long time for information to come back, this is lag.
• OP: This can be a site operator or a channel operator. These are people that run things.
• ISO: This is an exact image file of all the contents from an original CD disk. These are normally very large and unless you have a CD burner because there is no way to extract the file. You have to burn the file to disk. But once you burn it you have an exact copy of the original disk. These are normally traded between people with very fast connections.
• MP3: These are commonly found on warez FTP sites. What are they? They are pirated music, how you would a full length CD quality song thats only 1meg per minute? Well who doesn't thats why they are found on so many warez sites. For more information on MP3's go to www.mp3.com.
• Beta: This is a programming term for software that is still under development. Most of the time you would rather just stay away from it. Because most of the time is's beta operating systems that you will find. And really you have enough problems with the one you have why do you need one thats not even finished yet, you know that one is going to be filled with bugs.
• 0-Day:  This is a length in time when the warez come out. This means that the warez are not over a day old yet. In most cases about 90% of the time, the warez come out  before the software hit the store shelves. (Story: right when Quake2 very first became warezed at one point there were more illegal copies of it then legal ones.)
• ICQ: This is a little kick ass program that combines chat, messing, and file transfer all into one little program. It is highly used in the warez world. You can get it at www.icq.com
• Banded: This sucks! but it can happen to the best of them. This is where you cant get in to a site or a channel or just what ever. Sometimes site OP's get pissed at users that are coming on from some IP's so they band all those IP's as a whole and yours might be with that IP group. Sometimes you have a BOT on IRC that has gone crazy and that pissed off the channel OPs so they band you.
• G/F: stands for "girlfriend" and it's something your not going to have, if you spend all your time doing warez
• WTF: short for "what the fuck" or a nicer way of saying it on IRC
• LOL: sort for "Laughing out loud"
• L8r: short for "Later"
• Trading: Exchanging warez for more warez. Beware of who you trade with, it's easy to get ripped off.
• Nuked: This happens while your on IRC. Someone sends you a packet of data that screws up your system, sometimes your O/S will just crash but it can get worse.
• Burner: This is just a short name for a CD-W or a CD writer, something that you will need to get sooner or later if you plan keeping the goodies that you download. A CD will hold average 680 megs of data. But someday they will have DVD-R's and they will hold a ton of data on them.
• Burn disk: This is a disk that comes from a CD-R
• VIV: Pirated video files, like MPG but smaller, people are taking music videos and compressing them down to files, they are about 1 meg per min just about like MP3's
• Ser#: Serial number that you will need to install some applications. Most of the time they are listed inside the NFO file that comes inside the zips when you download the program.
• L/P: Login and password used for FTP sites.
• IRC: (Internet Relay Chat) This is where you can chat with people around the world. Trust me there's over 10,000+ people that are available for chat at any time of the day.
• Dial-up: Using a telephone modem to connect to an ISP (Internet Service Provider)
• IP: The Internet Protocol; the most important of the protocols on which the Internet is based. It allows a packet to traverse multiple networks on the way to its final destination.
• FTP:(File Transfer Protocol) yes your web browser can do that, but it was not designed for that exact purpose that's why there are programs that will do that, there are tons of them out there but there are only two real good ones CuteFTP 2.0 and WSFTP I recommend CuteFTP but you make the call.
• H/P/A/C/V = Hack / Phreak / Ascii / Crack / Virii
• SPA = Software Piracy Association (the people that are trying to bust us)
• 3DFX: This is a newer graphics video card(chip-set) that is the start of the art in high end graphics for games, at an affordable price to the consumer. For more informaton go to www.3dfx.com

(Version 1.1 updated 10-10-98)
Sorry about the mis-spellings and incorrect grammar, I'm a computer nerd not an English Major