Topsite (warez)

Topsite is a term used by the warez scene to refer to underground, highly secretive, high-speed servers used by release groups and couriers for distribution, storage and archiving of warez releases. Topsites have very high-bandwidth Internet connections, commonly supporting transfer speeds of hundreds to thousands of megabits per second; enough to transfer a full Blu-ray in seconds. Topsites also have very high storage capacity; a total of many terabytes is typical. Early on these warez sites were mainly distributing software such as games and applications after the release groups removed any protections. Now they are also a source of other copyright protected works such as movies and music. It is not uncommon for sites to charge for access to the content, although this is frowned upon by the scene itself due to the decreased security.

Unlike their predecessors in the Bulletin board system (BBS) scene, topsites aren't advertised broadly. With the increased threat of police raids, topsites have been forced to employ elaborate security precautions in order to stay hidden from authorities.

A typical topsite configuration will only allow users to log in from a certain and host (or IP range for users with dynamic IPs), with SSL encapsulation on all FTP sessions. FTP bouncers are commonly used to hide the topsite's real IP address, and to share network load.

Along with an "official name", most topsites are also known in the warez scene by an abbreviation that is two or three letters long. Knowledge of the abbreviation as well as the official name is not shared, even between different scene members. For example, a topsite with the hypothetical name "Blackbox" could be abbreviated as "BBX" and subsequently referred to as "B**" during an IRC conversation between those with knowledge of the site.

Activity on the server is announced by a Sitebot in a private IRC channel which is usually invite-only. To receive an invite, users need to issue a command to the FTP server after logging in the site. This ensures that only those with accounts on the FTP have access to the channel. Sitebots typically run Eggdrop IRC bot software.

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