Back in the day (mid/late 90’s), there were private ftp servers that required a ratio. Some of these were run by release groups and hard to get on, some were more public. Couriers would download from one site and upload to another to build their ratio and get access to the good sites.
Before people figured out you could connect two ftp servers together directly, you would have to download to your computer and reupload. Most people were on dialup, so that was a non trivial time commitment.
Ohhh didn’t know about that sense of the word in that context. Interesting!
Do you have any idea what the warez scene is like today?
Also there was a bot on the former Warez-BB dot org that would post scene releases seemingly moments after they pre’d. Imagine those kinds of people are on Telegram or something today…