The Cracker
A cracker is someone who removes the copy protection of a software. Once the software is cracked, everybody is able to make copies of it. In the early 80s, the game-industry became very popular - first in the united states, and later in europe. With the first homecomputers the computer was no longer an office machine, it became a personal tool for privat people. With this, the software industry developed very fast. But they also discovered a
new problem: The softare piracy. To stop people copying their software very easily, the software developers thought that they could stop this by adding copy protections into their software. With this, they unintentionally provoked a new generation of organized computer crime: The Cracking Scene. Cracking has become a challange for lots of computer freaks to improve, that a copy protection can be removed. First done by lone wolfes, removing a copy was an easy job.
As the software industry built harder copy protections on their software, the crackers began to get organized. By naming theirselfs with pseudonyms and groupnames, they founded a new subculture of advanced computer fanatics. Because only a few people had the computer related know-how to remove a complicated protection algorithm of a software, this new founded elite-scene became an underground organization. They called theirselfs "Sceners" and the whole organisazion got
the name "Scene". Since then, the cracked software has a so-called "Cracktro" (Crack-Introduction) included. This "Cracktro" is a small multimedia demonstration with animated innovations and music with a small filesize. It shows the name of the cracking group for advertising. Cracktros has been made first on the legendary C64 (Commodore 64) and later on Amiga computers and much later on ibm compatibles. Cracking groups still advertise
theirselfes by including Cracktros in front of the original software and spreading it worldwide with a removed copy protecion. |