Talk:Standard (warez)

Comments

— JIP | Talk 05:00, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Can anyone add any information on who exactly sets these standards? What shadowy organisations are involved? -NeoThe1 08:26, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't matter 'who' but only that 'it is'. Rules help the scene to flow. I for 1 am in favour of it

Why does it matter? Why would you ask a question that no one would EVER answer? It wasn't one person anyway, it was a consensus based on a balance between quality and size. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sp4i6 (talk • contribs) 17:11, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

To me it's incredibly interesting to find out how centralised or decentralised the governing system is.NeoThe1 01:02, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

It's "the federation of releasing groups" and very loose as for who actually writes down the rules from revision to revision and organizes communication. What's important is that almost all major release groups sign, and the standards are golden. So it's not like there's a pyramid of syndicated crime or any sort of hierarchy, but more like independant countries and the the kyoto treaty. If there's any sort of nefarious influencing going on, it probably has more to do with top sites and enforcing these rules. By that I mean that many feel that the current nuke system is arbitrary and often not strong enough to encourage quality over speed. It's more efficient for a group to not test and to release as quickly as possible in order to get credit than it is to test first. So risking being nuked is deemed more less important than risking losing the race to release something first.--Trypsin 23:38, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Strange how a culture built on breaking the rules make up rules for itself. A scene rule you should add is that whenever there's an "I" in uppercase text it has to be lowercase. WTF is that about? 81.232.158.237 10:04, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

It probably has something to do with how "Iil and 1" appear on screen, lowercase i is easiest to read as i. 84.251.14.145 22:05, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

That's silly. For example, how could "i" in for "DEViANCE" be mistaken for a "1" even if it was called "DEVIANCE"? 81.232.158.237 12:25, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

You see, the warez scene dates all the way back to the 80s when such long namings and different charsets were limited in computers. It stays, you know. Many groups still even participate (which is quite obsolete nowadays) in the demoscene or supply their releases with cracktros, the most popular probably being Fairlight, and who even recently have won many times at the Assembly demo party, and such. --nlitement ^[talk] 23:35, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

I rather think it's because and uppercase "i" can look the same as a lowecase "L" -> IlIlIl vs. iLiLiL

some of this rules are really silly. I looks like l? it depends on typeface. you should always use verdana ;)
and how about 0 and O? it also looks the same in some cases--Tatsh 17:27, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

There is no cut and dried 'reason' a lot of groups use a lowercase 'i' instead of a capital 'I', other than social reasons. Some very influential groups have done this, and I'm fairly certain a few 8-bit computer era groups were doing this. It was distinctive and it caught on. Imagining there was a reason for the first group that did this other than wanting to use it as a matter of style is fantasy. It's not like a bunch of 16 year old 8-bit pirates created a Joint Working Group, met in Geneva, and hammered out a standards document after addressing the very alarming fact that someone might confuse an uppercase "I" with a lowercase "l". In the 8-bit era, the resolutions were poor enough and the letterforms - all monospace - were distinct enough that the only way you were going to confuse the two, this side of medically significant sight damage, was if you were being deliberately obtuse. Don't over complicate things, it's just a bit of stylistic flare that caught on. Kind of like: :) 12.148.54.126 (talk) 22:00, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

"Nonetheless the introduction of MPEG-4 playback capabilities in standalone DVD players was a result of the huge amount of TDX compliant movie material available on the internet." ← This is extremely hard to prove. There is really no manufacturer would ever say anything like this. I'm sure many people think this, but there is no way to prove it.--Tatsh 17:27, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Just add "probably" somewhere to make it valid. 81.232.158.237 12:25, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

This is a matter of simple deduction. Back in the days when DivX and XviD were becoming popular, encoding high quality video with bitrates making it possible to fit a ~90min movie into a CD was something of an occult science (remember, these were the times before AutoGK and x264!). Encodes made by regular users were usually no more than sub-par quality. Scene groups, however, had great expertise in encoding videos, and thus were the absolute primary source of quality DivX/XviD encoded movies.

It is obvious that the availability of high quality MPEG-4 ASP movies was the biggest factor generating demand for the so-called DivX DVD players. Such a demand arising from consumers wanting to view occasional home-encoded DivX clips and the like (which the complement set for TDX compliant movies basically consists of) is a logical impossibility.

This should be proof enough. There shouldn't be any incoherence concerning the truthfulness of my initial claims. My reasoning is also sound, so my conclusion is correct. This whole thing could be quantified/formalized mathematically if someone really cared as much. By applying exhaustive reductionism and correct modeling of the human nature, the truthfulness of the matter would be chopped up into elementary claims no sane being could object to. Well, it pretty much already is.

I think Wikipedia should introduce some sort of colloquial flag for articles which, due to their underground/non-formal nature, couldn't possibly have any kind of reliable third-party sources such as university studies etc. 88.112.190.157 (talk) 09:39, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Alternatively, people could stop treating this online encyclopedia as a dumping ground for their own half-remembered anecdotes and passed-on words of wisdom, which would obviate the need to drop our referencing standards. The warez scene has certainly been studied properly by reliable sources in the past; that this article presently does not make use of them is an unfortunate side-effect of the barrier to entry being so low on Wikipedia. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 11:27, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

The warez scene are defined by groups of people who have been involved in its activities for several years and have established connections to large groups. These people form a committee, which creates drafts for approval of the large groups.
You've got to be kidding me... this is encyclopedic? These "groups" could be just groups of friends in the neighborhood, for all I can tell. I suggest a "Essay-entry" or "Story" template. There aren't citations either. -76.4.49.201 23:40, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

These rules are perfectly genuine, but, in my opinion, due to the secretive nature of their authors, signatories, distribution and enforcement, any articles on the subject will always fail to meet Wikipedia's verifiable-content requirements. I recommend that they be mentioned in abstract terms (i.e., acknowledging their existence), but that explicit details be not recorded. 202.36.179.65 03:55, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Simply adding a flag like "Underground info" (you get the point) is enough. People aren't expecting encyclopedic verifiability when they navigate into an article like this. Omitting detailed information would really serve no purpose at all. Surely anyone who wants to be sure of their information's truthfulness will understand what kind of information they're dealing with in an article like this. 88.112.190.157 (talk) 09:47, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

In my opinion without the .dir rules it wouldent be as organized, and like somone eles had mentioned. Dupe check wouldent have been possible, when it was around irc. 72.81.182.145 (talk) 04:47, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Any rules on whether to write "x264" (lowercase x) or "X264" (uppercase X) in release names? Groups tend to do differently, and sometimes same group use different uniforms on different releases, often BDRip/DVDRip packs. This is a bit confusing, especially if you're in favor of consistency. However, this is of course wordly, to say the least. I've briefly looked through recent scene rules but no comments on this little detail. Oxiq (talk) 09:38, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

There are no rules for this. It's the preference of the group/ripper that ends up in the release name. Same with XviD or XViD in the past while it must be Xvid on Wikipedia. Ondertitel (talk) 19:39, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

Packaging ?

What is the purpose of chopping up a release into 50 MB pieces ? I understand the logic in the old floppy days, but why today ?

--Xerces8 12:08, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

- it's for easier distribution of the files over topsites, speed, racers, error correction (easier to replace 50mb then 4.7GB), tradition (which actually makes up most of the 0day/dox rules), amongst many other reasons - these things are out of the scope of this wikipedia article (2007-08-01)

Fortunately it does seem to be on it's way out, but things do tend to lag... It's already the case that archiving to cd is more expensive than archiving to dvd, but it will probably be another two years before the cd sized chunk goes the way of the dodo (likely because the average computer in China still lacks a dvd burner).

- [by: ptr] Why do these groups strictly use MP3? Vorbis is proven to be more efficient, isn't it?

• It's an often-asked question. So far, the benefits provided by ogg vorbis and other codecs over well-encoded MP3 are not strong enough to warrant the effort involved in changing. Processing MP3 features like ID3 tags is a major component of zipscripts, and thousands of sites would need to be upgraded to support a different codec. In fact, I don't think project-zs even supports ID3v2 yet. This limitation is not such a problem with other sections like DiVX and music videos, and so they are able to adopt new codecs relatively easily. 202.89.153.139 12:52, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I think the scene is a bit characteristic for trying to do things as 'perfect' as possible. (Because there are so many, and fairly strict rules.) I'm a bit of a perfectionist (wich is not always nice to be) and would say; first technology (the best codec), and after technology comes luxury (not having to rewrite some(/a lot?) software/websites.) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 80.126.42.203 (talk) 13:28:18, August 19, 2007 (UTC)

There is no limit of 101 disks in the old style naming format, because it continues from r99 to s00, s01 and so on.--65.9.110.130 (talk) 21:52, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Where exactly does the double packing (RAR, then ZIP) come from - did it serve any real purpose? People I meet either complain about it or offer no explanation other than "That's the way it's done for 0-day releases". What is it for? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.173.184.8 (talk) 15:59, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

---

It would really be appreciated if people STOP deleting information such as images and info on this page. No one can get caught or ratted out with a wiki, get over yourselves, you are not that important. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sp4i6 (talk • contribs) 17:15, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

removal of the tag

it does have references but their just not linked —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.245.1.188 (talk) 00:29, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

You need references for how the warez scene sets the standards, current references are just supporting that the standards exist and are correctly referenced, but don't link them to the scene. You need a reference that says "the warez scene sets standards for releases, for example standards X and Y to release programs W and Z " --Enric Naval (talk) 15:29, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

merge Zero_day_information here

The article Zero_day_information constain a few paragraphs on the offset and a short explanation of warez standards. This is a short article, so I propose creating here a section explaining the offset and then converting the Zero day article into a redirect to the section here. This way all warez standards are explained on the same place, and we don't need to repeat the explanation of what a warez standard. --Enric Naval (talk) 15:34, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

I'd recommend just delete the article, since most if not all content is already on Pre channel and Standard_(warez) articles. Format section is the only "informative" section of this article. Yet after 15 years, I haven't seen single BBS or topsite using "Zero day information" described in the text. It just sounds like something someone made up.

Pda (talk) 22:41, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

x264 Standards

There are quite some releases using the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC video format. Most of them are HDTV rips or rips from HD-Disks (Blu-ray/HD-DVD). They use the matroska container and mostly contain AC3 and DTS Audio.

These releases are standardized in: high.def.x264.movie.standards.rev2 and The.720p.x264.TV.Releasing.Standards.2007.

At least in the german scene there are also H.264/MPEG-4 AVC releases riped from SD-Disks (DVD) standardized in: German.x264.Releasing.Rules.non.HD.

Since x264 releases get more and more common this should be in the article (my english sucks so I can not do that)...--85.177.188.23 (talk) 10:47, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

It might be worth mentioning that scene in general works differently in Germany than it works in other parts of the world.

There are .GERMAN. specific rulesets, for example TV. If group A releases S02E01, then group B is forbidden to release S02E02, unless theres something wrong with release made by group A. Group B cannot "race"(meaning faster encoding,packaging,uploading to presites and actual release) the pre like its done in scene elsewhere. Since group A made the first release for that season, they called the dibs on the rest of the season. Pda (talk) 19:51, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Audio

Please update the WEB rules basing on: (Official MP3 Release Rules V1.1 active since 2007-06-01)

Encoding Quality For releases made from MP3s (online bought) and which are not SBD: VBR (all combinations, but no maximum bitrate limit) and CBR is allowed. The minumum bitrate for CBR is 192kbit.

=> You release the MP3 as is. It is NOT allowed to re-encode! If the source is below 192 kbit CBR it's not allowed to release it. Release the MP3 unmodifed as you downloaded it. Only adding/changing ID3 tag is allowed. If you want to release a -WEB- mp3 file with constant bitrate (CBR) then you must choose the best version (320->256->224->192 kbit) available at the shop.

For ALL other sources (CD, Vinyl, DVD, SBD, CABLE, LINE, etc.): You must use either: - LAME 3.97 (final version!) with preset V2 and VBRNEW ("-V2 --vbr-new") or - LAME 3.90.3 (modified version preferred) with preset APS ("--alt-preset standard"). For both LAME versions additional switches which would affect the mp3 quality are forbidden, especially no minimum or maximum bitrate limits.

82.160.17.130 (talk) 11:45, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

"While Vorbis is an open codec with more hardware support, AAC is likely to be adopted as a release standard in the future, because it is the successor to MP3 and because AAC is supported in more players, especially iPod players." - this is speculative nonsense on two fronts. The designers of AAC may have had in mind that it would replace mp3, but the userbase gets the last vote on this. Just like Ogg Vorbis, AAC proponents forget that technical details, and filesize at a given audio quality are not the end-all and be-all of what end users will actually accept, and since any end-user can encode an mp3, an ogg vorbis, or an aac file, they really do have a much larger say in this matter than typical format wars. Ubiquity and the fact that mp3 has not been "enhanced" with a DRM-enabled variant are key strengths. Secondly, what is this "likely" if not utter conjecture? Given the nature of the so-called "scene", predicting in advance that it is going to start championing a format that puts it out in front of end-users is silly, uninformative, and unhelpful. 12.148.54.126 (talk) 21:52, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Update

Can someone update the page? - 2009 rules are out for XVID, yet the page mistakenly says 2005 are the most current - my editing skills aren't good enough! 91.121.182.85 (talk) 15:27, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Done. I added some other rules too. 84.192.54.239 (talk) 14:21, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Can someone update the page, again? - 2010 Rules are out for x264. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.195.194.37 (talk) 22:33, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Multiple Issues

If this article is going to remain it needs a complete re-write. It has multiple issues:

• Much of it is original research
• It makes reference to articles that also consist mostly or entirely of original research
• It makes sensationalist claims about products and data formats with no citations to back them up
• It is not an encyclopedia article.

Because of the multiple problems I am recommending deletion or a full re-write.

-FoxMajik (talk) 03:28, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

About a rewrite: yes. The list needs to be restructured, some standards added e.g. pornography and some standards for "other" smaller scenes. e.g. covers. Besides naming, I haven't checked "What is defined" yet, so there may be issues. Some standards often need a bit more information what they're about.

• Much of it is original research

I don't think this is a problem if it's verifiable? Therefor, I've been adding references to the different rulesets. These Standards have been published in the warez scene (verify through pre db) and are available on http://rules.nukenet.info/. It follows the definitions on the Standards article. Personally, I only change stuff when I have sources, so it takes time.

It's in the nature of the topic. How do you verify if something is released illegally on the internet? Example: X-men workprint No mention of the warez scene because journalists are at the bottom of the piracy chain: p2p. (see x-men article about fired journalist using p2p)

There is a book that can help. (see further)

• It is not an encyclopedia article.

It is something that does exist, but it is underground. However, huge amounts of what is available on p2p originates from the warez scene. Especially television series. Therefor it's notable. It's easy to see (pick a torrent site), but not so easy to have references for this. A regular p2p user often doesn't see the difference between a scene release and a p2p release e.g. aXXo. A lot of private torrent sites are scene releases only.

Read fourth comment: [1]

• It makes reference to articles that also consist mostly or entirely of original research

That will change. I found this book: Software Piracy Exposed. Haven't read it, but it can be used as reliable source for many smaller related articles, e.g. workprint.

• It makes sensationalist claims about products and data formats with no citations to back them up

If it's about the RAR format used: common knowledge + it's in almost every ruleset. (Will get references when I decide to do the top part of the article)

About the products: haven't checked those paragraphs. Maybe the book will help. Otherwise, you have a point and it should be removed because products can vary over time.

If you talk about the "Consoles" part: these are probably all de facto standards. It should be possible to find sources for this, but hard to link it with the scene I think.

Please give me an example of WP:NPOV in this article. I'm a rather new wikipedia user and I'm not sure what you mean by that in this article.

Yes, the article needs work, but give it time.

Agreed about the rewrite. The MP3 scene description is pretty vague and the references do not apply to the actual standards used until the early 2000's (it was 192 kbps CBR, 44.1 khz). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.0.157.5 (talk) 05:06, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Scene game ISO

"Game releases by the scene in iso format started in 1998. Before this period there only existed game rips, even if the full game was included. This is most likely the first game iso scene release: Heroes Of Might And Magic III released by CiFE on 1998-02-21. Since the game iso rules started on 1998-02-01, there might be releases from before 1998-02-21. Scene game iso is always rar.

These are the first and only scene game iso rules: [2] They never got updated because the game iso groups could not agree on new rules. Newer rulesets do not exist. The ones that are floating around from later dates are done by Unleashed and got never signed by any scene group. There are only some new unwritten agreements that are not always followed by all groups."

Putting this info here since it's not sourced and could be wrong. --Ondertitel (talk) 21:51, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

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