[skilled]

The peak for warez communities was right around 2006. I distinctly remember how popular those forums and other sites were. There were ridiculous amounts of pirated software and media being shared, and most of that content was in fact hosted on Megaupload or RapidShare.

If you knew people (from IRC) you could get invited to scene torrent sites which was a much more efficient way of getting what you want. I mean, everything posted on warez forums was coming from scene FTPs anyway, it was just a matter of who had access to them.

EDIT: Hmm, this actually got me thinking. Did OVH ever get in trouble for how much illegal traffic they processed back in those days? If my memory serves, OVH was a very popular choice because of their reliable connectivity and really good upload/download speeds.

[gordaco]

What I miss the most about this "peak warez" period (and most of the mid to late 00s, basically) is the huge amount of blogs uploading rare old music. During this sweet period I was able to get a lot of very rare music from all over the world (as a bouns, you could in practice guarantee that it was virus-free since unlike actual warez these files weren't executable. Yes, I know that dedicated attackers can still find a way, but for your average script kiddie it was much harder to include a trojan in an MP3).

There are things that to this day I haven't been able to find on Bandcamp or on streaming services, including youtube, but which I was able to download during this small gilded age. Then again I weaned myself from streaming services (and from anything "as a service") years ago, so maybe things have changed. I also remember finding a lot of rarities in Soulseek when I had lucky days, but now there is far fewer people using it. In general direct download was so much better for this kind of content, because you only needed one contributor uploading it, and it was available for everyone. In P2P sharing you need much more luck to find someone seeding what you want.

I wish finding rare music was so easy in legal ways. I just want to download DRM-free albums and I will gladly pay (nowadays I buy a lot of music from Bandcamp), but in many cases that's not a possibility any more. I have also found myself in a case where music is available but not in my country. I remember a time when the only place where I found certain albums was in the german Amazon Music, but since I'm in Spain, I wasn't allowed to buy them. Gabe Newell is 100% right when he notes that piracy is a matter of convenience and not price.

Some parts of the internet have certainly got worse with time and this is one of them. Bah, get off my lawn.

[rcrestomods]

Hitting a college campus with a legitimately high speed OC level connection, a lax-internal network for connected machines, meant Napster and game servers went nuts on my campus turn of the 2000.

I still have a folder of miscellaneous files obtained from Napster by simply searching "remix" every few days. Yes, the quality is very hit or miss, but many I've never come across again, even in years of clubbing, videos online, etc. For example, this wound up in my collection:

https://www.discogs.com/Stina-Nordenstam-People-Are-Strange/...

[soylentcola]

I miss Audiogalaxy the most. Napster et al were a great early taste of being able to access most things I could think of (much like Youtube and friends became later) but Audiogalaxy was where I could find groups of people and when someone had an album by an artist I liked, I might see they also had others from the same label or genre, so I'd get those too.

I found so many things back then, and during that time period my musical knowledge/familiarity grew three sizes.

[jokethrowaway]

That still happens, I find out what to watch / listen just by curiously finding stuff in walled communities where I cannot invite anyone.

Oftentimes it's old

[scarface74]

Digital music that you purchase hasn’t had DRM for over a decade.

[nenadst]

according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Music

there are lots of countries where you can not buy DRM free music from amazon (afaiu what the OP was referring to)

so the problem is how to find a shop where you can buy your super rare tracks ...

(i assume some will also be bootlegs or other fan-made recordings - you wont find those in a shop)

[gordaco]

The thing is that in other occasions I believe I have bought DRM-free music from Amazon Spain. But those particular albums weren't available in Spain, and although I found them in the german Amazon, I wasn't able to purchase them. I assume that it was a matter Amazon only being license to sell it in some regions (side note, I'd rather not buy from Amazon. I was ready to bit the bullet because it was the only place I found them, after about two hours looking for alternatives, but even so, they didn't let me pay for it). Just another way in which copyright management goes directly against the user, I guess.

Yes, I know that fortunately there are many ways to pay for DRM-free music (I mentioned that I use Bandcamp pretty often). What I miss is the vast amount of content I had available 10 or 12 years ago; I have been able to buy a lot of music, but there is much more that just isn't available.

[scarface74]

You know there are other companies that sell music besides Amazon? You might have heard of them - they are a 3 trillion dollar market cap company that’s been selling DRM free music since 2008.