Re: "Ramblings On The Scene"

Written by Prof.X

Yeah, the statement is true! In my opinion the relationship between piracy and the Demoscene is noticeable. Look back in the good old C-64 times. Most owners of this machine swapped cracked games like hell.

First the crackers added their sign in the main game screen. Instead of "Copyright 1985 by Activision" they put in "Cracked by ******" or something like that.

Later on they coded little intros and merged it in front of the cracked games. Then they ripped the music and used it in their intros or made a kind of musicdisk. Pictures, logos and endless greeting scrollers came along.

Then as the game companies did not produce so many games anymore, the intro/demo scene begun and is still alive. Many of these people joined the demo scene. Crackers, swappers and gamers. And the C-64 crackingscene died slowly. The disk you received from your swap contacts wasn't filled with cracked games, but with intros, demos, music and pictures!

And what is going on the PC scene nowadays? All crack groups put info files to their packages like the demo groups to their demonstrations.

Others make little intros to advert their cracks and become famous.

Demo groups have got cracking divisions and so on. And I think without these guys the demoscene would not have been going this way.

Just ask yourself: Do you register any shareware programm you have used? I think less than 5 percent of the people pay the cheap registration fees. And what is the reason? I don't know, but when I install an program that you can test for 30 days and there are so many restrictions (you can't save or use any of the features) I really get angry. How can I test a program when the important features are disabled? So I start trying to crack or register this program without paying the registration fee.

But I think when the program is good and used very often then you have to register from the author!

Take a look at the demoscene. A well-known tracker called "FastTracker II" from Triton (Starbreeze) is spread around the globe as shareware! Almost any demo musican has used this tracker. But have you all registered? Most of you guys must say: NO.

OK, if there was some nagscreen or restriction in this tracker, the program was cracked and fully used. And by the people in the demoscene at first! So to my mind there is a relation between all the people in the scene.

- Prof.X