Before posting in this section, you must ensure that what you are about to post is in fact a GroupRip. A GroupRip is a release from an official release-group operating on the mp3/warez scene.


What is the scene?

The scene aka the warez scene is a worldwide network where people trade pirated goods, like dvd's, movies, games, applications etc. Warez refers primarily to copyrighted material traded in violation of its copyright license. It does not refer to commercial for-profit software counterfeiting. First warez is released by release-groups, groups which are specialized in publishing warez. They copy a dvd or break the security of game, or rip and encode an album into mp3 format and will make it available for other people, as a so-called release, by uploading it to sites. These sites are very fast private ftp-servers, and the first stadium in the distribution of a release. Eventually, at the end of the distribution, the releases are available for everyone on p2p-software.

The speed of this worldwide network is enormous. Within minutes a release can be copied to hundreds of other sites. Within an hour, it's available on thousands of sites and fxp boards. Within a day or two it's available on newsgroups, irc and in the end, on p2p-software.

The official warez scene consists of the release-groups and the topsites. These represent the scene core. The others (newsgroups, p2p'ers, etc.) are NOT a part of the scene.

Here are some official current and former release-groups:
0MNi, aPC, ATX, BbH, BKF, C4, CHR, CMS, CR, CRN, DJP, DVNMP3, EGO, ERB, ESC, eXe, eXtaCY, FAM, FTD, FSP, FUA, H3X, JCE, KrbZ, KSi, OSC, pLAN9x, POiSE, RAGEMP3, RAZAMP3, RNS, RpM, SNOOK, SUT, tAS, TQM, UKP, UMT, WCR, WHOA, XXL, YSP. There are about 100 other groups which have come and gone (and some which are still around) but which I decided not to post because frankly I don't have that kinda time on my hands.

So, do you have a legit GroupRip which you would like to upload and post? If so, please include in your upload the related nfo/m3u/sfv files (if you have them). If you have the nfo, please include it in your post, so the board members know which group released, what is the quality of the rip, etc.

You can also post internal releases from the release-groups mentioned above, as well as releases from Recycled_INT, a group which rips dupes, (i.e. albums previously released by other groups), but which does so using scene standards.

If you're not sure if you have a GroupRip, then post your rip in either the New Albums (year 2000 and +) or the Classic Albums (1999 or older) section. If it is found to be a GroupRip, a mod will move it to the appropriate GroupRips section.


What is a Newsgroup?

Once upon a time when the internet was still young there were special interest groups that shared information and kept in touch by using a bulletin board type system. This system was designed to take advantage of the internet in a way an old bulletin board couldn't; each location had a machine (news server) that would store all the messages of the newsgroups that were desired by it's users. A short time passed and the users of certain newsgroups thought that this system would be ideal to share files with each other. It's easy to access newsgroups but unless you are familiar with them, navigating and downloading files from the newsgroups takes more effort than p2p software. You can download from newsgroups using a newsreader, such as: NewsLeecher and Xnews. There are also pay news servers, these are faster and can hold up the files longer than free news servers. Free news server can be quite fast, and pay news servers are even faster.

Rips from/by newsgroups (ex: WCS) are NOT scene rips, and should not be posted in the GroupRips sections. Why? Because these rips are not subject to the scene rules.

Why would you care if they are not subject to scene rules?

Because:

1. Scene rules enforce high quality releases only, so no worries about bad quality, errors, missing tracks, skips, pops, etc.. When a release-group fucks up, they either redo it or another group steps up and releases a proper rip.

2. You can check that everything has been downloaded correctly with the help of the SFV file (SFV = standard file verification). It enables you to determine whether what you've downloaded is a complete, legit and unaltered release or not.

3. The rules lead to a standardized way of sharing. You will learn to recognize a good release and helps you avoid poor releases done by amateurs. It also facilitates the comparison of scene releases.

4. Scene releases always contain (in the nfo) plenty of useful information regarding the quality of the rip, album and scene release dates, info about the artists/albums, etc. This way you'll always know what you're downloading.

5. 99% of the time, group releases are legit releases (actual albums and bootlegs), i.e. no fan-made compilations or fakes or the like.

If you're curious to know what the scene rules cover, here is a copy of the scene rules from july 2007 (click on the bar to enlarge):