copyparty

plural copyparties

1. computingAn event where people meet to swap software (often pirated copies of commercial releases), a forerunner of the demoparty.

   Extensive documentation on the history of copyparties and demoparties has been lovingly preserved by the demoscene itself.

   2008, Tara McPherson, Digital youth, innovation, and the unexpected, page 193

   2 more examples

   DreamHack began in 1994, in the basement of a nearby elementary school, as a small, local subvariant of what was then called a ‘‘copyparty’’ — pre-broadband occasions to share software or demonstrate flashy off-label uses of early home computers.

   2015 July 16, Gideon Lewis-Kraus, Photographs By Franck Bohbot, “Power in Numbers”, in New York Times

   In the mid-1980s, demoparties were also copyparties, where the first so called hot releases of cracked and trained games changed hands. However, illegal software copying later disappeared […]

   2021, Mark J. P. Wolf, Encyclopedia of Video Games