Pirate Poppers [German] Pc Torrent
Cre Wallace
During the 1980s, in countries of Western Europe and the United States home computers such as the Apple II, the ZX Spectrum or the Commodore 64 became affordable symbols of technological modernity. The mass dissemination of home computers, named microcomputers or just micros, which were supposed to be used primarily by teenagers for educational purposes, had an impact on the development of the information society.1 A smiling teenager sitting next to his micro with a running edutainment program became the omnipresent symbol of things to come.2 This popular image was one major growth factor in the demand for home computers.3 Parents who wanted to secure a prosperous future for their children were easily convinced that they should purchase a micro rather sooner than later.
Contrary to the media image of hackers, their subculture was based not merely on the interaction with computers, but also on complex interactions with other computer users who shared the same approach to the new technology as well as the respective social customs. Their activities were far less spectacular than the movie War Games (1983) depicted. Actual hackers were not extraordinary computer geniuses, but rather ordinary adolescents with programming skills who massively copied computer games. The omnipresent term hacker was scarcely used by adolescents; they rather appropriated terms such as computer underground, computer scene, or just the scene for insiders as synonyms. To understand the activity of this subculture, we need to scrutinize not only the relationship between human beings and technology, but also the context of popular culture and other subcultures of the era, which greatly influenced the shape of teenage computer underground.
While discussing this computer underground, I will refer primarily to academic literature on the social shaping of information and communication technologies (ICT). Moreover, I will refer to monographs on other subcultures from the era. This approach helps to understand the specific nature of the computer underground, which includes relationships of users with their micros, as described in depth by Sherry Turkle,7 as well as social interactions among users within the framework of their subculture group. Despite the huge popularity of the scene in the 1980s among computer users, it has been completely omitted in current monographs on cybercultures.8 These monographs propose a deterministic approach to the technology. The internet is frequently described as a technology that significantly influenced new forms of social activities among ICT users. For instance, as the archetype of cyberculture David Bell has proposed Multi User Domain (MUD), an early internet fantasy multiplayer game, completely ignoring not only the mass computer underground, but also the Bulletin Board System (BBS) culture of the 1980s.9
Historical scholarship has perceived the development of youth cultures in postwar Western Europe mainly as the growth of socially and politically active youth movements, for instance peace and environmental protection movements.11 On the other hand, scholars of British cultural studies focus on the different milieus of working-class subcultures such as punks and skinheads to describe the cultural practices of working-class youth without a strong or explicit political engagement.12 In the late 1990s and the 2000s, however, scholars became interested in different forms of European and American youth cultures.13 Especially the decade of the 1980s is regarded as a flourishing epoch of new forms of youth culture, for instance the graffiti scene, bodybuilding culture, goths, hip hop culture, the blitz kids, metalheads, poppers, the rave and acid scene, and skateboard culture. My article contributes to the growing body of work on the diversity of youth lifestyles in 1980s Europe by highlighting how computer users established social and cultural practices with features similar to other forms of youth subcultures in this era.
The relatively easy practice of software copy protection removal became a popular equivalent of the Whiz Kids felonies, covered and exaggerated by the media. Levy quoted the terms defying, breaking and cracking that were originally used to describe the removal of copy protection.27 The latter term became the most popular, as young users referred to themselves primarily as crackers. The term cracking scene was adopted as a popular description of the subculture of software pirates. However, terms like illegal scene, pirate scene and computer underground were widely used as synonyms.
In spite of such claims, the practice of cracking should rather be perceived as a form of building adolescent masculinity through supposedly illegal acts and the distribution of highly desired commodities among peers.33 It was a complex set of different reasons that made cracking attractive for adolescent males. Media moral panic about hackers made such figures widely recognized and highly esteemed by young computer users due to their supposed hacking skills. Only with some knowledge of programming could one modify computer games and commit a supposedly criminal act. In public discourse, the figure of a hacker is seen as a lonely geek who lacks social skills and interactions. But being a cracker actually required advanced social skills to establish and hold a position in a peer group.
The dissemination of the cracking scene practices in other geographical regions was very limited. According to The C-64 Scene Database (CSDB), the scene became somewhat popular in South and Eastern Europe as well as Australia.35 The American scene, very different from the European, will be briefly discussed below. In regions with a much lower income level, home computers were luxury commodities and did not become popular enough to lead to the emergence of cracking groups. In Central Europe, a cracking scene developed only in Poland and Hungary in the early 1990s, when the introduction of the free market economy resulted in the quick rise of salaries and a decrease of computer prices.36 Another reason that the scene was geographically limited was the fact that in other regions, different hardware platforms were common, for instance clones of ZX Spectrum, Atari XE/XL or Sharp instead of the more expensive C-64. Fewer games were released for such platforms and their users did not develop sophisticated software exchange networks.
The rise of the cracking scene was greatly influenced by the huge success of Commodore 64 computers introduced in 1982; only the C-64 reached international popularity. Thus, C-64 users were eager to look for contacts with peers from abroad to acquire games that were domestically unavailable. Exchange networks for pirate software grew in Western Europe and the United States, where easily affordable home computers were popular among adolescents. However, the differences between distribution systems on both sides of the Atlantic were substantial. In the US, where modems were widely popular, the computer underground appropriated the Bulletin Board System (BBS). Games were uploaded and downloaded from password protected underground BBSes. In Europe, where modems were rather scarce and international calls expensive, the whole distribution of pirate games was based largely on snail mail, and BBSes spread only in the late 1980s.
Crackers not only removed copy protections. They also tried to modify and improve original games. The aim of such modifications was the removal of all noticed errors and glitches in the original code, since the cracked game was meant to be superior to the original in every possible way. Another popular practice was the compression of game files. This was important for practical reasons: it was easier to send a compressed game on one floppy disk than the original two-disk version.
This testimony shows clearly that technology-oriented subculture did not exist in a social vacuum. Hackers were not lone geeks for whom computers as the second self were a substitute for social relations. The episode is also an example of hacker jargon. Instead of the word hacker, the names illegal guys and sceners are used. Along with cracker, these terms were the most popular self-descriptions of computer underground members.
The lamers were those who tried to exist in the computer scene but did not uphold the appropriate etiquette and cultural values. The quoted interviewee describes his schoolmates as lamers because they broke the rule that cracked games should be distributed on a non-profit basis, which was one of the crucial distinctions between the commercial and the cracked software distribution systems.42 A lamer was also someone who tried to exist within the subculture, not just the ordinary gamester who merely copied pirate games. According to computer underground values, three categories of computer users exist: real sceners, often called elite, lamers, described with derogative terms, and gamesters, mostly presented as neutral. This distinction is similar to the social structure of clubbers. Thornton describes a strict distinction between hips, hipsters and squares.43 Hip means someone who is capable of upholding the whole value system established by a specific subculture, or even introduces an innovation; a hipster is someone who is trying to dress and behave like a hip, but lacks skills to be accepted by the hip community. A square is an outsider without affection toward the subculture.
Numerous popular culture references pointed out in this chapter show how adolescent computer users were impacted by the media culture of the era. In literature on the subcultures of the 1980s, authors focus on the formation of masculinity through rituals of independence from mainstream society, for instance by listening to indie rock.52 The case of the cracking scene shows a different and more complex picture of youth. A cracker could be interested in doing something supposedly illegal while at the same time shaping his identity with a nick from Star Wars or The Lord of the Rings; and his creative activity, besides cracking games, would encompass covering the Miami Vice soundtrack. Moreover, crackers openly admitted their interest in the practices of consumption such as going to parties, buying expensive consumer electronics or driving a Golf GTI, one of the most iconic cars of youth car culture. Teenagers also mixed different forms of culture, for instance listening to Sisters of Mercy while being interested in acid and rave scenes. Those two music genres are traditionally discussed as significant for completely different subcultures, in this case goths and clubbers.
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