Movie piracy veteran recalls 20 years in the scene: Formerly a key member of notorious movie piracy
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[b]Movie piracy veteran recalls 20 years in the scene[/b]
Via [url=https://torrentfreak.com/movie-piracy-veteran-recalls-20-years-in-the-scene-151011/]Torrentfreak[/url]
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[quote][i]A piracy veteran of 20 years has been telling TorrentFreak about his life in a world-famous 'Scene' release group. Formerly a key member of notorious movie piracy group 'MaTinE', SaInT began honing his craft in the 90s and over the next two decades worked with groups including Centropy. A 2013 encounter with the police changed everything.[/i]
Topsites are top-secret, high-speed servers used by piracy release groups and their affiliates for the storage and distribution of unauthorized copyrighted content. Together, these silicon-powered caches and their carbon-based operators form an entity known as The Scene.
Members of this tight-knit but sprawling network are known for their vigilance, and for good reason too. As the source of tens hundreds of thousands of ‘pirate’ releases every year, law enforcement has a keen interest in bringing them down. But for many the rewards of Scene life are well worth the risks. Twenty years ago, SaInT began taking lots of them.
“I started camming in the early 90s for a group called HBO (the founder of which ran a New York bootleg ring) and that’s when I learned the craft and understanding of a camcorder and its technology,” SaInT informs TorrentFreak.
SaInT received his first camera (a Sony) from a topsite affiliate but quality was lacking. Soon he upgraded to what he describes as “professional grade” Panasonic kit and after doing work for infamous release group Centropy, SaInT moved on to form another famous operation.
“At that point we knew we had it. I gathered one more person to the crew that I trusted, we will just call him Mr P for now. He helped find a few topsites and someone who could program and run our own sites and BNCs. Here, ‘MaTinE’ was born.”
Until its demise just a couple of years ago, MaTinE was a big name. A cursory flip through most torrent sites reveals releases as current as 2013, but the group dates back to at least 2003 with the Internet debut of titles including Spy Kids 3D plus screener copies of Matrix Revolutions and a director’s cut of Alien.[/quote]
I've always avoided screeners, so I'm unfamiliar with his name. Still, pretty interesting interview.
I love it when torrentfreak does interviews/artricles like this. Internet counter-culture is in dire need of good documentation.
I have no idea who or what any of these things are.
I always found the movie piracy scene to be incredibly interesting. It'll be a shame if no one ever documents what was a very big cultural phenomenon of the Information Revolution.
Pretty interesting look at the logistics of camming things. Wonder how it'll evolve with wearable tech starting to become popular and to see if theaters would get so distracted by wearables that the conventional ways get detected a smidge less.
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