Book Review: Warez - The Infrastructure and Aesthetics of Piracy by Martin Paul Eve

Obviously, I've never downloaded "warez" in my life. And, for the avoidance of doubt, I was never a member of the so-called "Scene". But such shenanigans were almost unavoidable on the early web and - wow! - is it weird seeing snippets of your history presented in an academic study!

Why do people "pirate" software and other intellectual property? The answer isn't as simple as you may think. This isn't a book about noble thieves, or cheapskate freeloaders - rather it is an examination of the culture which thrived around a social object. It just so happened that the social object was piracy.

This is one of the clearest takes I've seen on subcultures as Alternative Reality Games. People are playing a game where the reward is fake Internet points, an elevated reputation among other players, and a sense of danger / excitement. It is incredibly similar to the hype around crypto today.

It has a brief look into ASCII art aesthetic and how the Demo Scene came to be intertwined with the Warez Scene. I think some of the analysis of "concrete poetry" is a little overblown - these aren't formally trained artists engaging in studied creation, they're bored kids mucking about trying to look cool.

And it is "cool" which is at the centre of this book. Reputation - no matter how fungible - is about being cool. The subculture develops to maintain that cool. And then the rules come in so that people can definitively say who is cool. Which then prompts a backlash, name-calling, and splintering. Thus the cycle begins again.

There are a few oddities. The author addresses the fact that it is hard to do a proper investigation where there are no interviews and where the participants are secret. The start of the book trying to tie the Scene to the stock market I found a bit unconvincing. But he does a terrific job explaining the technology, the terminology, and the slang of the era.

You also have to wade through a large amount of "padding". I'm not sure the book needs quite so many lists and tables - but that might just be me not understanding how academic studies work.

If you remember this song, you'll enjoy this book.