The-Eye.eu: We now host the largest open repo of piracy metadata online today, with only more to come!

Update:

• srrdb.com

• 1TB+ in 4,000,000+ files.

Hey DH/OD folk, it's been a little while but for those of you not in our discord community here's a significant update you may have missed, while a lot has changed and we've had many new additions and other side projects to work on lately this is a pretty significant update, so I'll just get right into it.

What is Piracy Metadata?

This could get long and convoluted but simply put when you download pirated content from reputable scene groups you get a few extra files along with the movie, show, software or whatever it is you downloaded, the scene has strict rules and standards on how they release content requiring certain files to be packaged alongside them. For all releases the most common of these files being nfos which explained very basically is an information file that will give you details about who released it, their source, the specifications of the files, descriptions, etc. along side these depending on the type of release you'll also find sfv files, media samples, screenshots, playlist files (usually m3u) among other such things.

Speaking personally I used to be more heavily involved in the scene than I am today, pre my datahoarding days for the most part and it didn't until fairly recently occur to me that nobody is doing a great job of archiving and serving these files en masse back to the public, maybe for obvious reasons in some cases. There have been many sites over the years (nfohump, orlydb, crackwatch, srrdb, predb, nZEDb to name a few) that have logged scene releases, served metadata, etc. but over the last few years these sites have either gone the way of the dinosaur or become very restrictive when it comes to allowing the general public to download everything, so this is how the piracy metadata archive came about at the-eye.

What is the Artscene?

The above may sound boring to most but what draws a lot of people to these files isn't the info on pirated media but more so the art that often comes along with them, here are a few examples...

• 7th.Heaven.S10E19.HR.HDTV.AC3.5.1.XviD-NBS

• F-Zero.JPN.VC.Wii-OneUp

• F1 2009 for PSP by ZER0

• F1 2009 for Wii by iCON

These are just some quick examples in png format for ease of viewing, originally these files were .nfo but due to the character encoding and the inability to (easily) display them properly on the web many sites convert(ed) their nfos to png, the-eye will serve a mix of nfo/txt/png where it makes sense or what is available, in the future we will be offering everything converted to png for those folk who just want to view the artwork simply, there are also nfo viewers that help in viewing the nfo files as originally intended.

Here are some resources and videos worth taking a look at that explain much more than I imagine you want to read from me.

• The Art Of Warez, a recent 30 minute explanation and round up of the Artscene paired with some very prolific examples from many groups.

• juxtapoz.com article on The Art of Warez

• Jason Scott aka /u/textfiles BBS The Documentary Part 5 - Artscene, This is a great watch and interviews key players from the early days of the Artscene.

• artscene.textfiles.com related files and art packs served in compressed formats.

• Demoscene - Wiki The Demoscene is what came about when artists just wanted to display their art aside from the piracy.

• ASCII Art - Wiki

• Warez Scene - Wiki

The rabbit hole is deep here, this just skims the surface but makes for a good jump point as you dive in.

The Data!

• /public/Piracy/

As we've just launched this a few days ago we're currently only serving 13,971,540 items in 330GB but I wanted to get this out sooner rather than later so as to attract possible data donors should someone have something I'm missing. I have a little over 5TB yet to be wrangled into some coherent order so I'll be adding content in some form or another over the next few months and directories are subject to change in this time. We will also be making this directory full-text searchable via our new search platform at searchin.the-eye.eu but that will come down the line given file count it's no small task to index everything and it will require some downtime to get out of the way faster, that will be announced and added here over the next few days.

So that's the data for now, depending on popularity we may launch this again sometime on a subdomain like we have for exodos.the-eye.eu as of late.

^{*video samples may or may not be removed in the ^future}

Community

You can reach me here on reddit, in the r/DataHoarder IRC (GreenObsession) or on our discord server. Come chat to everyone, see our new content before anyone else and join other like minds.