3 ms·

In 9th grade I was a "VP" of a group called aPC. We were couriers. I used to walk down the hallways of my Jr High school thinking how I was so fucking cool and

by jmacd 3y ago

In 9th grade I was a "VP" of a group called aPC. We were couriers. I used to walk down the hallways of my Jr High school thinking how I was so fucking cool and not one single person around me knew it. :)

ExoticPearTree 3y ago
And yeah, the bandwidth requirements back then to make it as a courier. I almost forgot about all the groups in the '90s. The .nfo files were the best art.
burnte 3y ago
Ditto. I lucked into being a courier. We had a second phone line at my house and while we cancelled it, Bell Atlantic left it active for three YEARS, but no active billing attached to it, so I could call anywhere in the world for free. I used Slip.NET for years too, and became a courier between EU and North America, since I had free long distance I could make the long calls to upload/download. To this day I have spoken aloud my warez courier handle exactly once, to my wife, and I doubt she remembers it. There's two other people in the world who know (each ran a BBS in the 412 that were my US endpoints), but I doubt they remember today, and I have no plans on becoming culpable what that identity did. :D
- EternalUsenet 3y ago
  The 412? As in the Pittsburgh area?
  - burnte 3y ago
    Indeed. Born and raised in Pgh, moved out of PA in 2009.
- jmacd 3y ago
  Greets!
exclusiv 3y ago
Same! And APC rings a bell - were they MP3 and ISO? I was an MP3 courier in a group on a lot of global top sites. I remember being in an irc chan for one of them (I think it was the hungarian one) and kali of the top group RNS stated his birthday or something else personal and said "oh crap I shouldn't have said that" lol. He was indicted by the DOJ in 2009! He was found not guilty of conspiracy to commit copyright infringementalthouh 4 other members pleaded guilty. They busted sites from time to time but RIAA couldn't do anything substantial. I stayed away from movies and tv because that was riskier and I enjoyed getting music a week or two before the p2p platforms got them. And also getting high quality rips. The sister group that did ISOs eventually got busted. Saw the move from ftp to fxp and shell accounts and semi-auto and automated trading. Some government officials would spend years to infiltrate the groups to bust the sites and members. Anyway, it was with being a courier that I got interested in code and had an insane amount of lines to handle all the topsite rules on what they would accept and I traded semi-automated. We even had a UI to help. I actually met a few people from those days in person and they were really cool. Still friends with one of them today. Many groups required meeting in person or doing a phone call before you could join and then they eventually relaxed that.
- jmacd 3y ago
  MP3. They were mostly rippers but I was a courier who would get their stuff on topsites and then the indies or courier only groups would distro it. I have trouble remembering all the structure and rules (written and unwritten) after all these years, but an ASCii NFO file still makes my heart leap like nothing else!
  - exclusiv 3y ago
    Ah yes! So APC was more like an RNS then. I recall now after looking up some of your groups' releases too. APC was the next best group as far as releases to RNS. I probably have a ton of those NFO files from back in the day and the courier mp3 rankings for EU and US. I was #1 US and top 5 Europe once. EU was quite hard due to competition and latency, although a uni shell account certainly helped. :) Most were current year only US releases, 192kbps and VBR?. Some accepted 320kbps and older releases if they had never been ripped. Some topsites only accepted releases from certain groups. My favorite site had a folder with an archive of all the billboard top 100 albums. I think that was the top swedish site (bbs?) or maybe chiplips which I believe was hungarian. There were a couple good ones in US (MIT/RIT) but the others were in sweden, hungary, netherlands. I think one in France. It was interesting to see how those groups and topsites were chased and shut down, but the P2P platforms that came out made it impossible to shut down anyway.
nilespotter 3y ago
I was in RiSC in Jr High School. Not a VP though, not as /<rad I guess.
figmert 3y ago
What's a VP and what's a courier in this context?
- jffry 3y ago
  VP I assume is vice president? Courier is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warez_group#Courier_groups https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warez_group#Courier_groups
phatfish 3y ago
I ripped a lot of DVDs in the 2000s, even had a few pre-release. One of our group committed suicide, I forget how we found out, someone outside the group knew him IRL i think. There is an NFO with a tribute out there somewhere. Writing some tools for doing releases got me into Python.

by jmacd 3y ago

ExoticPearTree 3y ago

And yeah, the bandwidth requirements back then to make it as a courier. I almost forgot about all the groups in the '90s. The .nfo files were the best art.

burnte 3y ago

Ditto. I lucked into being a courier. We had a second phone line at my house and while we cancelled it, Bell Atlantic left it active for three YEARS, but no active billing attached to it, so I could call anywhere in the world for free. I used Slip.NET for years too, and became a courier between EU and North America, since I had free long distance I could make the long calls to upload/download. To this day I have spoken aloud my warez courier handle exactly once, to my wife, and I doubt she remembers it. There's two other people in the world who know (each ran a BBS in the 412 that were my US endpoints), but I doubt they remember today, and I have no plans on becoming culpable what that identity did. :D

EternalUsenet 3y ago
The 412? As in the Pittsburgh area?
- burnte 3y ago
  Indeed. Born and raised in Pgh, moved out of PA in 2009.
jmacd 3y ago
Greets!

exclusiv 3y ago

Same! And APC rings a bell - were they MP3 and ISO? I was an MP3 courier in a group on a lot of global top sites. I remember being in an irc chan for one of them (I think it was the hungarian one) and kali of the top group RNS stated his birthday or something else personal and said "oh crap I shouldn't have said that" lol. He was indicted by the DOJ in 2009! He was found not guilty of conspiracy to commit copyright infringementalthouh 4 other members pleaded guilty. They busted sites from time to time but RIAA couldn't do anything substantial. I stayed away from movies and tv because that was riskier and I enjoyed getting music a week or two before the p2p platforms got them. And also getting high quality rips. The sister group that did ISOs eventually got busted. Saw the move from ftp to fxp and shell accounts and semi-auto and automated trading. Some government officials would spend years to infiltrate the groups to bust the sites and members. Anyway, it was with being a courier that I got interested in code and had an insane amount of lines to handle all the topsite rules on what they would accept and I traded semi-automated. We even had a UI to help. I actually met a few people from those days in person and they were really cool. Still friends with one of them today. Many groups required meeting in person or doing a phone call before you could join and then they eventually relaxed that.

jmacd 3y ago
MP3. They were mostly rippers but I was a courier who would get their stuff on topsites and then the indies or courier only groups would distro it. I have trouble remembering all the structure and rules (written and unwritten) after all these years, but an ASCii NFO file still makes my heart leap like nothing else!
- exclusiv 3y ago
  Ah yes! So APC was more like an RNS then. I recall now after looking up some of your groups' releases too. APC was the next best group as far as releases to RNS. I probably have a ton of those NFO files from back in the day and the courier mp3 rankings for EU and US. I was #1 US and top 5 Europe once. EU was quite hard due to competition and latency, although a uni shell account certainly helped. :) Most were current year only US releases, 192kbps and VBR?. Some accepted 320kbps and older releases if they had never been ripped. Some topsites only accepted releases from certain groups. My favorite site had a folder with an archive of all the billboard top 100 albums. I think that was the top swedish site (bbs?) or maybe chiplips which I believe was hungarian. There were a couple good ones in US (MIT/RIT) but the others were in sweden, hungary, netherlands. I think one in France. It was interesting to see how those groups and topsites were chased and shut down, but the P2P platforms that came out made it impossible to shut down anyway.

nilespotter 3y ago

I was in RiSC in Jr High School. Not a VP though, not as /<rad I guess.

figmert 3y ago

What's a VP and what's a courier in this context?

jffry 3y ago
VP I assume is vice president? Courier is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warez_group#Courier_groups https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warez_group#Courier_groups

phatfish 3y ago

I ripped a lot of DVDs in the 2000s, even had a few pre-release. One of our group committed suicide, I forget how we found out, someone outside the group knew him IRL i think. There is an NFO with a tribute out there somewhere. Writing some tools for doing releases got me into Python.