The AI-powered English dictionary
usually uncountable, plural warez
(Internet slang, leetspeak, dated) Software that is illegally obtained or distributed. quotations
By the end of the day Mad Hatter, a ringleader of the software piracy group called the Inner Circle, will have poured 300 Mbytes of illegal “warez” onto the Internet.
1997 April 1, David McCandless, “Warez Wars”, in Wired
Too many gamers see nothing wrong with downloading “warez” (usually pronounced “wares,” but also “wah-rez”), retail software products that have been “ripped” to make them smaller and remove copy protection.
1999 April, T. Liam McDonald, “WaReZ the Logic?”, in Maximum PC, page 41
Warez appeared in the 1980s with the advent of Bulletin Board Systems.
2012, Eric Diehl, Securing Digital Video […] , Springer Science & Business Media, page 16
third-person singular simple present warezes, present participle warezing, simple past and past participle warezed
(Internet slang, leetspeak, dated) To obtain a copy of (software or other works of authorship) illegally. quotations
Many of these keys are, obviously, being used by people who've warezed XP, but there's also a reasonably large number of software professionals and refuseniks who have used them even though they have a legitimately bought version of XP.
2002 June 7, John Lettice, “MS turns up heat on warezed WinXP copies”, in The Register
Warezed SoundForge Files In Windows Media Player [title]
2004 November 12, Timothy Lord, “Warezed SoundForge Files In Windows Media Player”, in Slashdot