Warez
Pirated software distributed by organised scene groups — a subculture with its own rules, its own hierarchy and no profit motive.
The word is a mangling of "wares" and denotes both the material and the culture around it. Groups cracked copy protection, packaged the files and released them with an .nfo file in ASCII art crediting who did what. Releases followed a detailed rulebook on file sizes, formats and timestamps, and groups that broke the rules had their releases nuked by rivals.
The point was status, not money — being first with a release, ideally before the product reached shops, which was called 0-day. Distribution moved from BBSes through private FTP servers with couriers to today's torrent sites, and the culture gave birth to the cracktro and hence the demoscene. It has carried a legal cost: several major groups have been prosecuted in international raids since 2001.