Warez, Irrational Pessismism, Bermuda Triangle

[Jesse Sheidlower]

On Sat, Jul 13, 2002 at 10:48:25AM -0700, Dave Wilton wrote:
>
> If the group started post-1981, you should be able to find the earliest
> messages on Google (Advanced Groups search). They may not have the very
> first messages for a particular group, but they'll probably come pretty
> close.
>
> For alt.binaries.warez, Google has a post from 13 Dec 1995. Google doesn't
> archive binaries groups, but you can still get a feel for the date from
> crossposting. There are a total of 3 crossposts to alt.binaries.warez that
> month and about 30 in Jan 1996. So it looks like a December 1995 date for
> its inception.
>
> Google also has posts to alt.warez.ibm-pc.apps from Oct 1995. It also has
> December 1995 posts to alt.2600.warez.

If you're interested in the word "warez" there's no real interest in when
the first newsgroup devoted to warez arose; what matters is when the word
"warez" itself first appeared in Google Groups. And the first Usenet post
with the word seems to have been in 1987, in a post to comp.society.futures.

This is earlier than I had expected to find the term, but perhaps (I haven't
particularly thought about it) it's earlier still. Michael Quinion, any
opinion?

Jesse Sheidlower
OED