Seems that many in the open and public torrent world do not understand the memorandum or methodology behind Scene and P2P, so perhaps it's time that we explain a little bit about the history of peer to peer, open torrent sites, the "p2p" groups, and "the scene". There is alot of historical context, propaganda, truth, and hidden despise that comes from this mystery, and we'll dig a little deeper now.
For years, peer to peer communication has existed, and a group of teams known as "the scene" dates back to the early 1980's, long before the arrival of the BitTorrent protocol. The methods and means used by the scene have a long and outstanding track record, of overcoming the odds and external warfare of the various forms of file transferring, such as FTP private and public downloads, and the "controversy" behind them, warez sites, and the battles they faced through the years, and http:// protocol as well.
See, "the scene" has always remained as an underground entity all to itself, never once giving in to the demands or urges to release publicly (although there is leaks, but we'll get to that later), and they've remained an ultra-secretive society of competitive groups and teams, all trying to be the first to "pre" (release/premiere) something new. Whether those new release are software, apps, cracks, keygens, patches, games, movies, music, or just about any form of digital media, hard media, or electronic warez which can be transferred, manipulated, or reproduced, "the scene" is always the first to get their hands on it.
From how you may ask? Well, "the scene" has ties which are undisclosed, but they typically get their paws on these items before they are even released for retail in the stores, so I'll let you do the math, and figure out where from. To be serious, "the scene" differs from open p2p in many ways, first of all, it's not about the "peers" to them, they DO NOT release publicly, that's probably the greatest difference between a scene and p2p releaser. So to define them a bit more, not only is it a conspiring difference that "the scene" doesn't release publicly like an open "p2p" group would, but, they have much contempt and lack of respect for "open" BitTorrent and p2p groups.
You see, "the scene" follows release standards, rules and regulations, which are updated frequently. They must follow these rules, or face a "scene ban" which can then remove them from "the scene". If you would like to find out more about "The Scene Rules", then just visit this link The Scene Rules. P2P however has no "rules" per say, except that to be proper you do have "guidelines" which many do not seem to follow.
P2P could not exist in the same way as it does today, without "the scene", and anyone with proper knowledge knows and understands this. Most all sources, are "leaked" from scene groups, onto public or private peer to peer file sharing sites, most publicly, BitTorrent sites. These sources are thus used by p2p groups to encode from, and then released openly on all forms of file sharing networks, again most popular, would be the BitTorrent protocol.
It does not however mean that p2p relies only upon "the scene" in order to gather it's sources. P2P teams and groups have acquired within the last few years, their own sources of direct/line audio for films, hard copy inner distributors or black market sellers of bootlegged pre-retail games, or films, and sometimes, internal connections from within the other industries of entertainment, who have contempt for the company they work for, or take payment for the sources.
In recent years also, p2p groups have headlined the masses with some of the greatest and fastest releases, of some of the best quality material. While the scene is mainly about speed, and competition, p2p has it's own competition, which is defined mainly upon quality. There are so many open and known p2p groups and releasers, that now quality is of the utter most importance. Why would someone download Example.Film.1.DvdRip.Xvid-p2pgroupA , when they also minutes later or even at the same time have Example.Film.2.DvDRiP.XviD-p2pgroupB , and the p2pgroupB release is ten times better in quality? That's just an example, although most of us even with nooblar knowledge realize there are so many different p2p groups and releasers now, that there is quite a selection for everyone to choose from.
If in fact, everyone were informed of this, we would not see actions which we see often which misrepresent or disrespect both the scene and p2p. You'll see totally new groups, doing improper resolutions for movies, wrong aspect ratios, which will not play in some standalone players, and even those whom choose to re-encode a public release. Some of these re-encodes, are more like re-re-re-re-encodes, because the original source for example came from a Russian warez group, then traveled to the Chinese BT sites, then made it's way onto Spanish releasers, then finally was re-encoded again in English. Re-encoding reduces quality, regardless of how much you filter and modify the appearance of a release. This is a fact that cannot be changed, direct sources will always be better than any imitation, period.
Most users do not know about "copyrights" and dated "copyrights" on a release. For most all releases, you can open VirtualDub or VirtualDubMod, and insert copyrights, for whatever you would like about the film, or even view them about a download. Recently however, some noob groups (sic) have decided to rename releases and put them on the BitTorrent protocol, and a select few, have figured out how to change/modify the copyrights in VDub or VDubMod. This is not appreciated, and doing so is extremely looked down upon in the world of releasing in general, and that's something that both p2p and the scene groups agree upon.
There however is a way, that some of use with "real" knowledge of the releases, know that something has been renamed, mislabeled, or retagged. There are applications that tell the original encode date, and copyrights, which absolutely can not be modified (sorry about your luck TA noobs), and one of those programs is called "MediaInfo". This is what is used a a "proof" in the scene to show when a "rip off' has occurred, and proof to us with knowledge in p2p when some no name new group decides to release something that seems an awful lot like a previous release. This is sad that this occurs, but it's even more embarrassing to the group who claim's the release is their own when in fact it is not. If you would like this application, visit MediaInfo, which is a very handy tool, and seems some people (TA) should try to use it before releasing.
Another method of mislabeling is this, those whom retag another releaser's work. While in p2p it's recognized and well known it's okay to put your "uploaded by:" information in the description, it's considered highly disrespectful to tag a release with your own name. For example, "Example.Movie.2009.DvdRip.Xvid-RealGroup {weretaggeditgroup}", doing something such as this is improper. It takes away the fans of a release group, and makes it harder for them to find their favorite groups on search indexes, and also, confuses the new crowd as to whom is actually responsible for the release. In the description, however, it's perfectly acceptable, because as I previously stated, this doesn't affect the search indexes and when a user downloads a .torrent file for example, it doesn't change the original title of the .torrent or release.
The scene however, despises p2p, because they release for the "thrill and competition" of the release, and do not want their releases or releasers being in the public spotlight. That is how they're remained unaffected through the many different forms of peer to peer over the years, and this is how they continue to operate securely. They say they despise open torrent sites, for this reason, their releases are meant to remain underground, but those of us from public or private torrent sites, feel that "sharing is caring" and we are all about the total promotion of free and open file sharing. So you can take sides, or suggest as I do, that both the scene and p2p need eachother, and without one another, they couldn't exist, as many of the scene's sources, come through contacts they get by seeing their group on a public site, ironically.
Overall here today, I hope I helped to explain to many of you the difference between the two, "the scene" and "p2p", and also showed you comparisons. I hope to further in the future, follow articles based upon "the scene" and "p2p" groups, with even more detail. Remember people, that regardless of where it comes from, they deserve our appreciation and respect, for their hard work, effort, dedication, quality, speed, and the risks they take, to keep file sharing alive. Overall that's the big factors behind it
