The Z Factor: Warez, Sitez, Crackz, and Piratez

There is one bond that perseveres: piracy is the common enemy of Hollywood and Silicon Valley! Warez (pronounced wares, as in software) is a term commonly used to describe illegally distributed software from which copy protection has been removed, if it had any in the first place. In hacker parlance, a "z" is often substituted for an "s." There are warez groups that devote every waking hour to gathering, cracking, and distributing software so others can download it for free. The groups compete to crack the latest software releases first and post them before the competition. Warez can be downloaded on sitez (pronounced sites ), and they are not restricted to software. There are also warez sitez dedicated to the latest movies, recordings, video games , and porn.

Long before Eminem's second album, The Eminem Show , hit the store shelves in 2003, it was the second-most- played CD on computers around the world. That statistic comes courtesy of Gracenote, a company that maintains an online database that identifies a CD by matching the song titles and lengths. Media players such as WinAmp, RealOne, and MusicMatch check this database when a CD is placed in a computer drive so the software can identify the name of the CD and the song titles. This digital Top 40 generally holds few surprises , but when The Eminem Show hit Gracenote's chart at number 2 before the CD was even released, it made headlines!

Gracenote CEO David Hyman said, "This is the first time anything unreleased has shown up at number 2." The rapper's label, Vivendi Universal/Interscope, moved the release date up twice to circumvent piracy. The album was already online in MP3 format, but on a busy street corner in New York City the Friday before its long-awaited release, bootleggers were hawking The Eminem Show for five dollars a copy on card tables stacked with compact discs.

John Sankus, Jr. is a soft-spoken computer technician who used to work at a Gateway store in suburban Philadelphia. He'll never forget the day in December 2001, when 40 armed Customs agents burst into his workplace and arrested him as a ringleader of DrinkOrDie, a warez group that was a chief target among 100 coordinated raids in the United States and abroad. Sankus is now serving a 46-month stretch in the Allenwood penitentiary on a felony count of conspiracy to commit copyright infringement. Prosecutors accused DrinkOrDie of stealing millions of dollars worth of intellectual property and warned them that the damage is irreversible, despite guilty pleas from Sankus and others, because of the nature of Internet distribution.

Warez groups operate in secrecy , relying on encryption, disguised IP addresses, and invitation -only chat rooms. Their hierarchy is highly structured and broken into two groups. Release groups produce the pirated warez, and courier groups are the worldwide distributors . Government investigators estimate there are roughly 30 major release groups enlisting some 1,500 people around the world. In the DrinkOrDie raids, warrants were served on members in Britain, Australia, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. At least half of DrinkOrDie's members lived outside the United States.

Figure 9.2: A warez site

Warez groups specialize in pirating certain types of content. FairLight and Razor1911 are known for pirating video games, FTF and Immortal VCD release Hollywood movies, POPZ focuses on kid's game, and DrinkOrDie was best known for cracking Windows 95 before Microsoft even released it. Warez involves furious competition. Groups race to be the first to release popular movies and titles, but quality is of equal importance. Warez groups often diss each other. Immortal VCD once called a competitor's dupe of Lilo and Stitch sub par, describing it as "dark, shaky, and pixilated," and released an improved version of its own.

According to Sankus, DrinkOrDie divided its labor. Suppliers, generally insiders at software companies, provided new versions of software. Crackers, who have the most technically challenging job, strip the program of its copy protection. Testers then make sure the unprotected software works properly. Finally, packers divide the programs into small files and distribute them to release sites. Before moving into a leadership role, Sankus was a tester and a packer for DrinkOrDie.