Hotline Adventures In The Weird World of Warez

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June 22, 2008

Hotline Connect Red H Recently while working on some icon graphics for TodoPRO, a sound effect triggered a distant memory from my shady past.

It was the blurting, telephonic, and pornographicly obnoxious noise of an Admin broadcast message - from an old software-friend of mine called Hotline Connect.

These days it’s a sad lonely digital ghost town. But back in the mid 90’s, a 17 year old named Adam Hinkley developed a file transfer technology way ahead of its time. This was BEFORE Peer-to-Peer, BEFORE mp3 files were mainstream, and BEFORE most people really even knew what the internet WAS, let alone how to exploit it.

We were all on 28.8 or 33.6 modems back then - the lucky among us with 56k - and the lofty Internet Gods boasted shiny new cables, new-fangled DSL’s, and… *gulp*… heaven forbid the almighty T-1 or T-3 connection.

Hotline began innocently enough as a way for companies and small groups of people to share files and keep in touch with one another… but it wasn’t too long before the bony claws of seedy society grasped at opportunity… transforming Hotline into one of the internet’s top underground networks of black market digital goods.

High-end graphics software, the latest operating systems, games, utilities, graphics resource packs, mp3’s, full-length movies - and yes, all types of porn - hell, some guys even had GOVERNMENT files available for download - all now within reach of anyone who cared enough to look.

Well, sortof.

You see, Hotline wasn’t like the anonymous P2P networks of today - where you can just go on, download streams from tons of different sources, get what you want, and shut down. No, Hotline had a distinctive and fascinating social aspect to it.

And it was THIS that made it so damn addictive.

You couldn’t just go anywhere you wanted and download whatever. You had to play by an unspoken and oftentimes weird set of rules. Weird to outsiders, but made perfect sense to warez guys like me. We knew the code, knew what we had to do, and played the game.

To understand the madness, first you need to know how Hotline basically worked.

how Hotline works

First, there were 3 parts to the network:

1. A server. Simple enough, a guy who wants to share his warez with the world sets up the Hotline Server and configures what he wants to share.

2. A client. People who connect to the server do so with their own little program made for browsing files, chatting, viewing what was called “News”, interacting with whoever else was on the server (which usually included fighting with or flat-out scamming admins), and posting to makeshift message board.

3. A tracker. Trackers tied everything together. After all, you couldn’t connect to any servers if you had no idea what servers were out there. So what you did was get a list of trackers, which led you to servers… which led you to more trackers… which led you to even more servers. Usually you’d start out on the nicey-nice “official Hotline approved” trackers and servers, then, realizing how much they sucked, you’d quickly migrate to trackers deeper and deeper within the system.

And the deeper you got, the more mouth-watering your options became.

So whenever you got a listing from a tracker in the old days, it might’ve looked something like this:

Hotline tracker listing

Notice the names. Stuff like “Erik’s Hangout”, “The Puddy Lounge”, and oftentimes some weird shit you couldn’t even understand (let alone pronounce) were norms of the day.

So you’d connect to a server and, if you were lucky, see something like this:

Hotline server agreement

Then you’d be able to check the place out and see what kind of BS operation they were running. Usually you were presented with a folder structure resembling something like this:

Hotline server file listing

You could easily waste hours and hours searching, hunting, and pecking around. That’s because most of the good stuff was on private servers. And to get into a private server (if you could find one), you’d have to somehow sweet-talk the administrator into bestowing upon you the highly coveted privilege of download.

But he wasn’t just going to “give” it to you… oh, no. You had to WORK for it. And this is where it usually got interesting because different admins had different ideas of what it took to get a download account.

Some guys just wanted to see you upload something, anything. Some didn’t care. Some had a very strict “no crap” policy and would “boot and ban” anyone who tried to slip one past ‘em. (Note: booting was the 2-click action they had to perform to disconnect you from their server by force, and banning was when they not only kicked you off, but permanently blacklisted your IP address from ever connecting again.)

With all the boot n’ ban policies going on, you had to learn the game fast or just forget the whole thing.

So Mr. Admin had “requests”; things you had to go fetch for him - and then he’d give you an account on his server… maybe. Sometimes he did.

Or, sometimes he’d just be a bastard and cheat you.

So you had to learn how to talk the talk, how to hunt and search for all the ultra-rare (and sometimes impossible to obtain) software, games, porn, whatever he wanted - and finally you had to be able to tell - BEFOREHAND - the telltale signs of a faceless online rat-bastard.

But if you were smart, diligent, and a wee bit crafty (sometimes flat-out dishonest) you could get an account on a GOOD server. And that’s where the fun began.

With your good account, you could leverage your findings to give OTHER admins of private servers the stuff THEY wanted… get an account there, here, there, there, and… before you know it, you’ve got your own private little undergrand trading network established. Each new account gave you more and more power and swing you could use to get the next account. It only got easier and easier.

Eventually you had enough going on to open up your OWN server… transforming the pawn into the broker. Now people came to YOU and were forced to do YOUR bidding.

A lot of stuff to share + a super-fast connection could equal enough clout to get new titles before they were even released… before even magazine reviewers got ahold of them, let alone the general public.

Yes, in these days “rare” was king, file trading was a learned skill combining bastardized social etiquette with Donald Trump dealmaking savvy, and cash could get you in the door to the underground so fast your head would spin once you saw what was on the inside.

And after all the wasted time and dealing with the massive glut of CRAP out there, it was this element of black market social intrigue that kept us warez guys coming back for more and more.

We didn’t care about the software. Hell, most of us didn’t even know what programs like “Maple”, “Maya”, and “Toonz” even DID, let alone how to use them. The software was just a means to an end, like a hunter proudly displaying trophy heads on a wall in his den.

That was the part most outsiders didn’t understand about the warez scene. It wasn’t about using any of it. It was about the having and hoarding of something exclusive. Something that made us all different from other “normal” people and special.

So with that in mind, I’d argue none of us were thieves. (besides, the concept of piracy is largely a myth drummed up by software industry giants to bloat their numbers and them ‘em an excuse to raise their prices, because like it or not, if it weren’t for file trading, Adobe Photoshop would’ve never become the industry standard it is today - and Doom wouldn’t be considered one of the greatest PC games of all time)

Try, then buy. Works every time. And the people who try, and DON’T buy… they wouldn’t have bought anyway.

And THAT’S the source of one of the greatest lies the software company’s feed - by claiming they’re “losing” XX million to piracy implies that every single download is from someone who would’ve purchased if no download were available.

Having lived on the inside of this culture, I can say it is simply NOT TRUE. Most of the people trading this stuff don’t even use it and out of the ones who do, most are too young to have enough money to purchase it to begin with!

So what you’re left with is a very small fraction of actual abusers. And I would argue that these people should be quietly allowed to continue, especially the young kiddies who don’t have the cash to pay… cause guess what? Sooner or later, if they’re serious about how they use the software - they’re gonna buy that latest version eventually. Maybe that swiped copy of Photoshop they got in High School is the one thing that got them good enough for a high-paying gig later. And what software are they gonna to want to buy? They love Photoshop. They were raised on it. The answer is simple.

Ok, the rant’s over. But before I go, here are some of my fond (and not-so-fond) memories from the high school Hotline days…

once I hawked an entire album of Irish Pub Songs to a guy who in return gave me an admin account on his server. The power-rush went to my head and whenever I got on there, I’d ban everyone so I’d have all the bandwidth to my scrawny little modem. I sucked the server dry, uploaded a link to the guy’s raw C:\ drive, then totally molested his computer and privacy. Where on earth did I get the Irish Pub songs, you ask? K-mart. Five bucks.
one time I got access to a server run by a guy who called himself “Macros The Black” - a Mac guy for sure, but ran a mean PC game. This was one situation where sweet-talking actually worked and I didn’t have to pony up a thing of my own (back in those days, uploading was a big deal because most of us were on snail-like modems) - this was the guy who had a lot of the government stuff. I have no idea how he got it, but I never messed with it. I knew better than that.
my cousin Caleb and I used to get on the high-speed connection at the local internet cafe and within 4 minutes we’d have dual Hotline clients running and suckling at the nipples of some site or another. We’d do a smash n’ grab, work together to get requests, and then raid the same server with the same account at the same time, sucking it dry before moving on to the next target.
the first mp3 I ever listened to - EVER - was one I got from Hotline. It was Meredith Brooks’ Bitch. I can still remember expecting to hear something slightly better quality than midi, and being blown away by how clear her voice was through my crappy little IBM speakers.
I first discovered one of my now-favorite bands - Garbage - on Hotline. Downloaded the song “Only Happy When It Rains” just to see what the heck it was. Was instantly addicted to Shirley Manson’s voice.
as you might expect, not many girls on Hotline, well except for this one; a very nice girl named Myriam:
many of the appz (oops, I mean “applications”) I use regularly today (and PURCHASE today) I first discovered on Hotline. Try, then buy. Works great.
I allegedly almost got my friend Ryan Qian allegedly deported, allegedly due to a Hotline scandal… allegedly. *cough*

Yes, in many ways I was a jackass SOB bastard in high school.

Live and learn.

P.S. In an ever-so-small nod/salute to Hotline, I nabbed the memorable “admin broadcast message” sound effect to use in TodoPRO for OUR admin broadcast sound. We need something loud, obnoxious, and attention-getting and this’ll do just the trick.

P.P.S. Thanks Hotline, for all the wasted hours, priceless introductions to new things, brushes with the law, and haunting sound effect memories. You will be missed. Eh, but not THAT much.

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