Citing Pirate Artifacts

By necessity, the bibliography to my book on Warez must cite a number of unconventional works that are not covered by standard style manuals. In particular, I need to make reference to NFO files that contain ASCII art and other iNFOrmation about the Warez Scene. As noted more extensively in the introduction, one of the primary sources upon which I draw is the DeFacto2 archive.

The format of some of these entries should be explained. For example, 722. "722 Topsite (722-722.1998.06.12.nfo)," June 12, 1998. DeFacto2, warez.scene.nfo.collection.v1.0.24351.shroo.ms.zip. refers to a group of individuals who run a topsite called "722", for which they created an advertorial NFO file about the site, called 722-722.1998.06.12.nfo, from 12 June 1998. The file itself can be found, in the archive, within the warez.scene.nfo.collection.v1.0.24351.shroo.ms.zip file.

Not all files in the DeFacto2 archive are within zip packs. Some are directly accessible via the site itself. Given that the archive makes no guarantees as to the stability of its URL structure, I list the filenames of the artifacts in the knowledge that URLs would only degrade over time if they were included.

For more on the ethics of citing Scene magazines and crediting the original authors by their pseudonyms, please see the extensive discussion in the first chapter of this work or the blog post that I wrote about it.

Citing Pirate Artifacts was originally published by Martin Paul Eve at eve.gd: Martin Paul Eve on November 20, 2021.