Is it as easy as…lets say I find someone who got the screener on the internet of Avengers: Doomsday. I torrent from him. Once download I condec or enhance the file rename it to something like fDon_Dickle Avenger’s Doomsday and my name will be put as the uploader or however it does using qbittorrent?
It’s not really complicated: they just include their name in the filename(s), whether it’s in the readme or the installer or the media files. Upload enough releases named something like “Some.Show.S01E01.Pilot.1080p.x265-AverageJoe.mkv” and people will start recognizing AverageJoe and their work.
Pretty much this.
I was part of the piracy scene in the early 00’s, and it pretty much went like this:
Pretty much nailed it, but for anyone out there thinking “hey I can do that”…
Point #1 is hard to do these days as a solo effort. A lot of these piracy groups have massive manpower backing them up, whether it’s a paid business or just a bunch of like-minded enthusiasts.
Point #2 is a little more doable, but you’ll spend all your time doing that to keep up with the release schedule of these groups. That or you’ll have to rubber-stamp your releases without much quality checking, which will affect #3.
However, Point #3 is where small enthusiasts can absolutely shine. A great example (though possibly on the more involved side) would be Adywan, who made their name focusing entirely on releasing maximum quality Star Wars releases, recuts, remakes, and remasters. There’s maybe a few dozen releases to their name, but mention that name to any piracy-aware Star Wars nerd and they will know it.
For as much content as the big names cover there’s lots of stuff that falls through the cracks, whether it’s entirely absent or just present with sub-par quality. Despite how large the Star Trek fanbase is there’s basically one copy of the non-remastered version of The Original Series floating around out there, and it’s a rather ancient encode.