of people who wanted to do this emerged, a requirement for promotion of individual groups became evident, which prompted the evolution of the artscene, which specialized in the creation of graphical art associated with individual groups. The groups would promote their abilities with ever more sophisticated and advanced software, graphical art, and later also music (demoscene). The subcommunities (artscene, demoscene, etc.), which were doing nothing illegal, eventually branched off. The programs containing the group promotional material (coding/graphical/musical presentations) evolved to become separate programs distributed through The Scene and were nicknamed Intros and later Cracktros. The demoscene grew especially strong in Scandinavia, where annual gatherings are hosted. Release procedure When releasing material, groups must first encode properly so as not to be nuked, which shows up as a cautionary flag to potential users. After encoding, they upload the files to a topsite, an FTP server with a large amount of bandwidth where all the files originate. When the upload is complete, they execute a command that causes the name and category of the release to be announced in the topsite's IRC channel using a IRC bot hosting an IRC script which keeps track of activity. This FTP server and IRC are hidden and closed to the public. New releases are also announced 0sec (meaning seconds to minutes after official scene pre) on various public websites. This is called a "pre" release. Once this is done, all other releases for the same material are nuked as duplicates ("dupes"). However, if there is a technical error or the file breaks the ruleset for the category, the original "pre" release will be nuked. Other groups then encode the same material and release it with a "PROPER" tag in the filename. The same group may re-encode the file, with the new release marked as "REPACK". If the issue was with something other than the main content, the same group can release a "fix", labelled "DIRFIX", "NFOFIX", etc. as appropriate. Release groups are exempt from FTP Share ratios in most cases, while "racers" in Topsite IRC channels will be given a ratio. Racers use FXP software and custom auto-trading software to transfer releases from one FTP to other FTP's and FTP Site-Rings (group of dedicated servers linked together) around the world. IRC site channels will use modes such as +s (secret) +p (private) and +i (invite only) to avoid detection. Each release in The Scene consists