I assume there’s some historical reason for this, but currently, the way scene releases reach most people seems to consist of:
-
Sites that track releases post the nfo file of the release; these sites generally don’t provide the release itself.
-
People then look for the release via various channels and download it.
Wouldn’t it make sense for the nfo to contain the checksum of the actual release, letting pirates verify unmodified copies of it and making it easier to avoid versions that have been modified in various ways?
Obviously you’d still have to trust both the site where you got the NFO (and therefore the checksum) and the people who made the original release, but those are usually relatively trustworthy, being known people who have handled a lot of releases with no problems - a lot of the danger of viruses and the like in software piracy comes from the risk of middlemen adding something.
Modern scene dosn’t even require strict .nfo files. Most TV groups in WEB or HDTV sections just add basic metainfo and maybe imdb link and barely include any nice ASCII art. Only the oldest and best groups do ASCII art nfo files with all kinds of useful info inside. However all scene groups are required to include .sfv rar checksum files. I’ve never seen any p2p groups do this. Most p2p groups .nfo files are forum html of mediainfo. But when scene releases leak to public and unrared files like .sfv are deleted most of the time by uploaders. So within the scene checsums work as they should, in public not so much. But there is sites like srrDB.com that you can use and most of there .nfo posts for .srr files also include .sfv files.