Lesson plan
Topsite
Topsite is a term used by the warez scene to refer to underground, highly secretive, high-speed FTP 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 (Mb/s); enough to transfer a full Blu-ray in seconds (as of 2006). Topsites also have very high storage capacity; a total of many tebibytes (1 TiB = 1024 GiB) was typical in 2006. It was common for home computers in these years to have access to broadband internet link with 1–1.5 Mb/s (with backbone fibre links topping to 100 Mb/s) and 80–120 GiB of storage (with 200 GiB disk entering the home market). Generally the characteristics of the link and (especially) storage can be at least two or three orders of magnitude above home appliances. 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 strictly prohibited for sites to charge for access to the content, due to decreased security, and sites found doing so are shunned by the topsite community.
Article summary
Topsite is a term used by the warez scene to refer to underground, highly secretive, high-speed FTP 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 (Mb/s); enough to transfer a full Blu-ray in seconds (as of 2006). Topsites also have very high storage capacity; a total of many tebibytes (1 TiB = 1024 GiB) was typical in 2006. It was common for home computers in these years to have access to broadband internet link with 1–1.5 Mb/s (with backbone fibre links topping to 100 Mb/s) and 80–120 GiB of storage (with 200 GiB disk entering the home market). Generally the characteristics of the link and (especially) storage can be at least two or three orders of magnitude above home appliances. 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 strictly prohibited for sites to charge for access to the content, due to decreased security, and sites found doing so are shunned by the topsite community.
Key claims
- members: 20,000 members — source: Wikipedia · confidence 0.95
Discussion questions
- Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
- The record states that the members is "20,000 members". What evidence would count against this claim?
- Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
- If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?
Bibliography
- Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1331505795
Key claims and bibliography are generated from the same tracked claims and sources as the article page.