warez - NicheInterests/mistfunk GitHub Wiki

Computers rely on both software and hardware to get the job done, and while hardware can be portable in the sense that you can pick it up and put it down in another room, only software can be transmitted and reproduced, either by having the data saved on its storage media (traditionally eg. punched cards, magnetic cassette tapes, [floppy diskette]s, compact discs) duplicated or the bites and bytes on said media being pushed through some kind of serial (eg. Laplink) or terminal connection (for most home computer users, that would look like a modem connection over the voice phone lines.)

When we speak of warez, it is never the hardware we're discussing (unless it is special industrial strength equipment used to mass-duplicate or break the copy protection of a program along the way), it is the software. But some kinds of software -- notably [freeware] and [shareware], often leading to their fate as [shovelware] -- have few restrictions on their duplication and redistribution. These, also, are not considered warez: if you were to share files of this type (contemptuously described in the underground as public domain) with warez connoisseurs, they would wonder why you were wasting their time. (The only time you'd see warez that look like PD files would be the circulation of registered versions whose unregistered, often [crippleware], versions -- programs like [Telemate] or [MIRC] -- were already being freely distributed.)

"Warez", then, are commercial software, deliberately shared in violation of their standard distribution terms (which might traditionally allow a purchaser the rights to make a single backup copy of the program exclusively for their personal use.) In a sense, it is short for "commercial softwares (shared in an unauthorized fashion)". Software developers were well aware of the warez phenomenon, or pirated software, which is why they would bake copy protection into their products (which is why pirates would crack the programs before spreading them.) (Other software houses might opt out of escalating the cracking arms war and find other ways to capitalize on unpaid demand for their programs, such as selling hint books and opening a 1-800 tips phone line to squeeze money out of their games' players whether they had paid for a copy or not.)

This doesn't only apply to hackers phreaking the latest [0-3 day] games but also drier goods -- applications and utilities -- being reproduced by otherwise law-abiding normies: a wholesome dad who brought home an expensive copy of Windows 3.11 and installed it on the new 486 in the computer room as well as the 386 in the garage office and the 286 in their college student's bedroom was very likely pirating at least two of them (more, if he borrowed it from his workplace!) All the same, while this quiet act of piracy could be said to technically be warez activity, its taking part outside the context of the organized [cybercrime] culture of file trading kind of disqualifies it from being considered warez... but it does set the stage for the slippery ethical slope that led so many otherwise morally-upstanding, law-abiding middle-class people to find themselves up to their neck in this criminal activity. If they weren't yet up to their neck in the peak warez epochs of the '80s and '90s, they probably found their way to a very similar place when Napster mainstreamed filesharing for music. (But MP3s, being data rather than software, cannot be considered warez.)

In conclusion, the warez of cybercrime must be spelt with a closing z, even in the singular. Wares are just something Khajit have to offer if you have coin.