Personally, I find it fascinating that this band of merry pirates is so organized, so rules-based. Out of a purely anarchic environment, they've managed to accept this kind of self-discipline. If only web-standards committees had that sort of power...
It's because there's a huge amount of competition in the "scene" to get first and best copies of a show. In order to declare a "winner" in the competitions, there have to be rules.
The (movie/audio/warez/demo) "scene" is not anarchic at all but rather a very well organised distributed processing machine. You probably know these guys organise into "groups" but there is lots of other stuff you likely do not know. I will describe below aspects of the warez scene, as it was some 10 years ago. I believe most observations continue to hold today and are probably mirrored in the movie-release scene. So:
"The scene" is made up of groups and each group is made up of specialists: suppliers provide material for release, crackers (or rippers, depending on context) remove copy protection and sometimes optional "filler" material, coders write useful helper software for the group and couriers distribute releases around the internet. Not all groups fill every role and some may have other roles I did not describe here (hackers, carders, hardware suppliers to name a few). There are sometimes partnerships between groups with different specialities; usually this occurs when there is an overlap in membership. For example: a release group may have close links with a particular courier group and those guys handle all their releases.
The distribution process is actually quite interesting. Each successful release group aims to have a small list of affiliations with well known and prestigious underground boards/ftp-sites. The quality and prestige of a board depends on the speed of its connection, its capacity, its group affiliations, the standing of its admins in the community and the speed with which new releases are uploaded to it. Each well regarded site is allowed only one particular kind of affiliation: a games group affil, an apps group affil, a courier affil, an ISO affil -- you get the idea. The important thing is that there is only one of each. Affiliations carry prestige for a site and being affiliated with the best sites raises a group's prestige, so there is often heated competition between sites and groups for affils. This is the case at least in the so called "zero second" scene where releases are "traded" (i.e. re-uploaded) by couriers within seconds of being first uploaded. Once a release has been traded among all zero-second sites, they slowly filter down to lesser and lesser sites until eventually making their way to the Internet at large.
So why would you go this all this trouble? The reasons are myriad but usually it comes down to prestige: for example, among couriers there is a longstanding weekly and monthly competition between groups that prove their chops by trying to dominate each other. Similar competitions exist among release groups. There is huge pressure to be the first to release a highly anticipated game or well known application. Additionally, there are strict rules about how to release something -- what to keep, what can (and should) be omitted, how to package everything up, the inclusion of .nfo and .diz files and so on. Failure to comply with these strict standards renders a release invalid and causes it to be "nuked" (deleted) among the top sites. This process amounts to a public shaming of the group responsible and makes it possible for competing groups to snatch the credit by doing a "proper" release.
I could go on and on but I think that's enough for now. Hopefully I've convinced you that pirates aren't an anarchic bunch ;)
Anarchism and "chaos" are linked in the popular imagination, but the "scene" seems truly anarchist to me:
"But there also is no lack of free organisations for nobler pursuits. One of the noblest achievements of our century is undoubtedly the Lifeboat Association. Since its first humble start, it has saved no less than thirty-two thousand human lives. It makes appeal to tho noblest instincts of man; its activity is entirely dependent upon devotion to the common cause, while its internal organisation is entirely based upon the independence of the local committees. The Hospitals Association and hundreds of like organisations, operating on a large scale and covering each a wide field, may also be mentioned under this head. But, while we know everything about governments and their deeds, what do we know about the results achieved by free cooperation? Thousands of volumes have been written to record the acts of governments; the most trifling amelioration due to law has been recorded; its good effects have been exaggerated, its bad effects passed by in silence. But where is the book recording what has been achieved by free cooperation of well-inspired men? At the same time, hundreds of societies are constituted every day for the satisfaction of some of the infinitely varied needs of civilised man. We have societies for all possible kinds of studies—some of them embracing the whole field of natural science, others limited to a small special branch; societies for gymnastics, for shorthand-writing, for the study of a separate author, for games and all kinds of sports, for forwarding the science of maintaining life, and for favouring the art of destroying it; philosophical and industrial, artistic and anti-artistic; for serious work and for mere amusement—in short, there is not a single direction in which men exercise their faculties without combining together for the accomplishment of some common aim. Every day new societies are formed, while every year the old ones aggregate together into larger units, federate across the national frontiers, and cooperate in some common work." -- Anarchist Communism: Its Basis and Principles
by Peter Kropotkin (1887)
I already told you: prestige. There is no profit motive, despite anything to the contrary you might have heard from the FBI or BSA. Occasionally people will enter the scene looking for ways to make money but this kind of motivation is seriously frowned upon and the individuals in question are often publically scorned. Simply: you don't earn any rep from being a conman or petty ripoff artist.
Here is a little more context:
Most release groups consist of individuals who break copy protection for fun. They compete amongst themselves to create clever hacks and one-up each other. It's a very tightly knit tribal culture: me and mine vs you and yours. Cracking releases or moving releases from one top site to another becomes an interesting game and so too are the metagames and scene politics that surround it. For example: a courier might strive to get friendly with site admins or group leaders who are privvy to upcoming "pres" (or pre-release) so they can get a leg-up on the competition. Be among the top 10 traders on a site for a few weeks and suddenly you have a reputation: you get invited to trade on more prestigious sites, join more prestigious groups and generally pal around with community elders. You develop very strong bonds over time and that's what keeps you in: the scene is where your friends are, it's where people know and respect you. Plus, the competition to be the best can be intoxicating.
Topsites can offer a pay to leech scheme. It's often a hushed topic and people don't like to talk about it (because it is insecure). Many topsites are at it.
A lot of scene members react badly to topsites like this, and often people infiltrate such sites and public a "scene notice" about them containing siteop nicknames, hostnames, IRC/FTP details, and screenshots.
Scene notices are like the news system of the scene. They allow people to publish messages that will disseminated to all the other scene topsites.
Let's not forget about hardware donors. Donate a hard drive? Get an account and some credits! Sites such as LSD and LOOP did this.. and many more still do.
I don't have a fancy liberal arts education so perhaps I'm misunderstanding the finer points of anarchism. As I understand it, the concept involves rejecting authority and hierarchy and neither of these is true of the scene.
Certainly things are not organised as rigidly as a government or traditional business, but neither does the scene resemble a collectivist commune. There are authority figures and hierarchies everywhere. The fact that there are quality standards for releases, that all groups (of any note) adhere to, and which are actively enforced throughout the community, should be indicative of that.
Let me spell this out for you a little further: everything from groups, to sites to individuals have their place in a pecking order. Each group for example is its own mini fiefdom; usually ran by a single leader or a council of elders. They decide what releases the group will target, what site affils to chase, what resources are required and so on. You march to their tune or leave. Initial (and often continued) membership is based on performance: if you impress with your chops, you're in. Drop the ball too many times and you're out. Always the objective is to be the best.
That is amazing. But you what would be really awesome? If these people got together and created a nice all in one php + sqlite script that allows me to put my DVD collection and PS2 iso rips onto my server and share it with my friends. I could give friends usernames and passwords and see which of my movies and games they downloaded and they can do the same for me. Like file sharing on a much smaller more personal scale.
Also, the bulk of legitimate releases comes from the "leaders" of the ISO scene.. As of right now there are ~38 users in the IRC channel representing the the majority of the top level groups. To me this is absolutely frightening that a channel like this even exists.
Competition forces rules to be born. Not just competition for prestige, a competition for access.
Topsites are fuelled by racers. These are the couriers, who transfer data between multiple topsites they have access to. All topsites have a multiplier. For every 1MB you upload, you can download ~3MB. If you don't each a quota or are not in the top ~15 racers by the end of the week your access will be revoked.
With access comes prestige, ability to race to other topsites, contacts, and leech access to the topsite. These things are many terabytes big and can have archives in excess of 60TB. A huge repository of constantly refreshing and up to date material.
Without rules this would become a free-for-all, with poor quality. That's no good for anyone.
It's funny because if it weren't for the pirates there'd be no innovation and new distribution means or it would be extremely slow. Hollywood and the music industry had become so stagnant, that it took pirates to get them to change their idea of distribution, I think.
