The Scene

The scene (often capitalised) is a term used by people belonging to various communities (social groups) dealing with software to describe the more extensive community that they collectively belong to. These groups include the demoscene, [cite web | title = The hacker demo scene and it's cultural artifacts | author = George Borzyskowski | url = http://pdf.textfiles.com/academics/demoscene.pdf , presented [http://www.perth.siggraph.org.au/meeting_20051001.shtml here] ] artscene, software cracker, reverse engineering, as well as the wider warez community. This use of the expression "the scene" has been in continual use in English for a long time before software even existed. Members of a social group know what "the scene" refers to, and most members of the software community use it to refer to all the software-related communities listed above. In the rest of this article "the scene" means the software scene.

The scene has no central leadership, location, ruleset, or other conventional distinguishing marks of existence, but some general guidelines apply globally, considering the historical usage of the term and the history of the communities the term has been used to represent. First appearing around the time of BBSes, the scene primarily relates to a community of people dealing with and distributing computer software or ASCII art for which special skills are required. The scene has evolved into a partially underground movement.

History

The Scene started emerging in 1970s used by predecessors of cracking and reverse engineering groups, their work made public on privately run BBS systems. The first BBSes were located in the USA, but similar boards started appearing in the UK, Australia and mainland Europe. At the time setting up a machine capable of distributing data was not a trivial matter and required a certain amount of technical skill, which was the main reason to do it. In other words, because of the difficulty of doing it, it was done. The BBS systems typically hosted several megabytes of material. The best boards had multiple phone lines and up to one hundred megabytes of storage space, which was very expensive at the time. Releases were mostly games and later applications.

As the world of software development evolved to counter the distribution of material and as the software and hardware needed for distribution became readily available to anyone, The Scene adapted to the changes and turned from simple distribution to actual cracking of the protections and non-commercial reverse engineering. As many groups of people who wanted to do this emerged, a requirement for promotion of individual groups became evident, which prompted the evolution of the Artscene, which specialized in the creation of graphical art associated with individual groups. The groups would promote their abilities with ever more sophisticated and advanced software, graphical art and later also music (Demoscene). [ [http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/ BBS the documentarty - movie] ]

The subcommunities of The Scene (Artscene, Demoscene, etc), which had nothing inherently illegal with them, eventually branched off. The same cannot be said for the more general Scene. Also, the programs containing the group promotional material, that is coding / graphical / musical presentations evolved to become separate programs distributed through The Scene and were nicknamed Intros and later Cracktros.

The demoscene grew especially strong in Scandinavia (Northern European subcontinent), where annual gatherings are hosted even today. [ [http://www.assembly.org Official website of a popular gathering organizer] ]

Since The Scene has no central leadership or ruleset, the misinterpretation of its essence by younger generations has been a constant problem throughout its history. There is no explicit definition on what makes a person a member of The Scene, other than "poser" self identification, so young people (a.k.a. "script kiddies") who had not yet attained the proper skills to do what the other members did, attempted to attain the same apparently privileged position of the older members through morally disputable methods. This problem has always been a driving force in the evolution of The Scene as well as being the main reason for many misconceptions related to technically skilled people.

General Scene guidelines

* Open - Anyone with enough technical or artistic skill can be a member of The Scene
* Free - All content offered on the Scene must be free of charge and non-profit and art is generally reusable with permission
* Groups - Individuals who make up the Scene may be members of one or many groups the point of which being that the promotion of work is unified; work published under one group name typically cannot be resubmitted under another
* Credit - Any sort of recode, rework, edit, manipulation or remix must also credit the author of the original, permission may also be asked of an original author to publish the remix
* Respect - Skill is the only thing by which people are measured on the Scene; if you are sufficiently skilled you can get into any group you wish
* Competition - Groups that form The Scene compete amongst each other, each wanting to prove they are better coders / artists than the other.

ubsections

Crackers and reverse engineers

The core element of The Scene since its beginning. This part of The Scene community specializes in the creation of software cracks and keygens. The challenge of cracking and reverse engineering complicated software is what makes it such an attraction.

=ArtScene=

The part of The Scene community that specializes in the creation of digital graphical art in text format. This has evolved into a separate community because it requires skill in both the area of utilizing the text as well as graphics design. This means there is not a very big crossover between people who are good Scene programmers and people who are good ArtScene artists. Yet ArtScene art was very popular on The Scene due to the point that text viewers were and are the most universal content displaying tools, perfect as a promotion tool.

Demoscene

The part of The Scene community that specializes in the creation of so-called Demos. These are computer programs which bundle together sophisticated code which produces esthetic art in the form of animated graphics with music. The idea is to display programming and artistic skill, thus Demos are fascinating flashy animations with trancy music all coded up with as little code and data as possible.

The Demoscene further branches into new and old:
* The old branch specializing in the production of art code for older platforms, where the processing power and space capacity are the biggest problems and require the biggest skill investment.
* The new branch specializing in the production of art code for newer platforms, where the challenge lies less in overcoming processing and capacity limitations, but rather making the animation look and sound as spectacular as possible.

Warez scene

The part of The Scene community that specializes in the underground distribution of warez software. There is a certain amount of crossover between the cracking and reverse engineering community and this one, as the former cannot operate without the latter. The Warez Scene has been with the Scene from the very beginning.

Distribution

One of the main aspects of being a good member of The Scene is letting your work be known. This requires a form of distribution. Because certain aspects of The Scene deal with files that cannot be legally offered for download on websites, there is a separate legitimate and underground aspect to the problem of distribution.

Legitimate

Is done by the coder / artist signing on to one of many websites that relate to The Scene and uploading their work there. Usually a piece of code / art is uploaded to a number of such websites. These websites are then visited by other Scene artists as well as fans who can then freely download the code / art. It is customary to upload the code / art in source format to help prove original authorship, however due to the need for translator software that arises from this, many Scene coders / artists decide to upload their art in more general formats such as MP3. [ [http://www.traxinspace.com/ Legitimate Scene music host] ]

Due to expensive bandwidth requirements, funding for many of these sites is a problem and they tend to be relatively short-lived. Scene artists have often made good use of the otherwise more general-public directed websites such as MP3.com, to utilize the publicity potential.

Underground

Members involved in this aspect of The Scene are generally well-organized in their behavior and cautious with their identity. They maintain a private network of FTP sites called topsites that get new releases first. Releases are distributed from topsites down to smaller and smaller sites. The general rule is a give/take trading. One must submit one's own cracks in order to have access to other people's cracks. Leaking cracks to the general public is punished by a scene ban, and people who do this frequently have ulterior motives such as using the cracks to distribute destructive code such as Trojan horse programs.

Users who distribute releases amongst sites are called couriers and must earn credits by uploading files from other topsites. Credits, sometimes counted in megabytes, allow a user to download files. For example, many sites allow a user to download 3 megabytes for every megabyte uploaded. A credit balance is persisted with each user's account.

Releases containing problems (for example, poor quality rips, trojans, etc.) are nuked; a permanent mark is placed on a release, and the user responsible for uploading it is fined credits. Competition amongst courier and release groups is the primary driving force behind the distribution of releases.

References

ee also

* Ebook scene
* Standard (warez)

External links

* [http://www.welcometothescene.com/ Welcome to the Scene] - A fictional series about The Scene
* [http://www.aboutthescene.com AboutTheScene] -Works Now! ( [http://web.archive.org/web/20070314044837/http://www.aboutthescene.com/ WaybackMachine URL] )
* [http://www.nfohump.com NFOHump] - List of .nfo files from The Scene