Piracy is Preservation
Piracy is Preservation
Image description: a screenshot from the Wikipedia page for the Doctor Who TV series, with a user-added caption that reads "Preserve the media you can before it's gone forever." The Wikipedia article reads, "No 1960s episodes exist on their original videotapes (all surviving prints being film transfers), though some were transferred to film for editing before transmission and exist in their broadcast form. [88] Some episodes have been returned to the BBC from the archives of other countries that bought prints for broadcast or by private individuals who acquired them by various means. Early colour videotape recordings made off-air by fans have also been retrieved, as well as excerpts filmed from the television screen onto 8 mm cine film and clips that were shown on other programmes. Audio versions of all lost episodes exist from home viewers who made tape recordings of the show. Short clips from every story with the exception of Marco Polo (1964), "Mission to the Unknown" (1965) and The Massacre (1966) also exist."
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Internet archives should be an entity receiving funding through tax dollars. They should be archiving a lot more of the internet, too, including all media. All tax paying citizens should have access to it through a govt provided email acct. Artists should apply for grants instead of relying on corporate residuals.
Socialize copyright.
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Copyright should be set to its original 25 year limits. Then we wouldn't have this problem in the first place.
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Copyright makes a lot less sense with the internet.
The barriers to entry to markets are so low.
If I write a song, and you hear it, steal it and record it, I can't really say "well hey man I was saving up money to get some studio time."
Virtually every market has an analogous situation with it's copyright. Not all, but most.
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I just noticed a Disney film with the 100 years logo, and realized they still have copyright on their OG stuff. Too bad. It was never meant to establish a dynasty, just a bit of crumb before your work went into public domain. Sigh...
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It would be less of a problem. But most of the media I consume is younger than that, and yet it is still at risk of going away at any moment. Nobody wants to even sell digital copies, except for the ones on CD, DVD, etc. Most of the time your only option is a "license" to access it, or a monthly subscription. A couple of years ago I "bought" the new Blade Runner on Google Play. Turns out now you can only watch above 480p on their approved devices. Which does not include my PC, my main device. The same goes for the streaming services, you get shafted on quality if you aren't using a "smart" tv.
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If I build a house, you buy it, that's it. I worked and got paid. Why in the ever loving fuck do people get paid for work they did 30, 40, 70 years ago?!
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Because the music, TV show, movie, or other media is a product they created and continue to sell copies of. If you build many copies of that house and sell more and more you continue getting paid.
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They should be archiving a lot more of the internet, too, including all media.
They do, they have an extensive collection of scanned books, music and film.
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They are digitising Marion Stokes' collection
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Yes I agree, we definitely need archival of many more parts of the Internet. It's a lot harder for people now to access stuff that is no longer "popular" (I'm referring to streaming services here) and since so many shows are on so many different services that are raising costs it's easier for stuff to get lost
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I’m not pirating porn because I’m a cheapskate, it’s because I’m a digital archivist trying to preserve cultural artifacts for future generations.
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There was documentary done a few years back on the comedian Bob Monkhouse and about his obsession archiving media, a lot of which were thought to be lost forever. He had multiple VHS players set up around his house to record things in an era where not many of the general public had one. He also kept tv guides and had written into the margins if there was a change in the schedule. He was actually taken to court in the 70's for copyright infringement but the case was thrown out, though quite a few items from his archive were seized and never returned.
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My grandfather got really into video archiving and from the early 80s through 2005 amassed about 14,000 video tapes, mostly of various aviation TV shows. He spent his entire life as an engineer for Lockheed. His entire 2-story condo in San Diego was a massive VHS library with shelving extending 8 ft high.
Anyways, my father and aunt threw it all in a dumpster because they didn't know what to do with it. All they kept were his ashes.... Which almost 20 years later are still sitting on a bookshelf somewhere
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Wow that's dedication.
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I knew what this was from without reading the description. Such a sad portion of a wikipedia article to read.
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Tonee?
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I'm the unknown fourth member of the group, Jeff
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I wish there were something like bittorrent that worked better as an archival mechanism. The weakness of bittorrent is that material tends to disappear completely when there is no longer widespread popular interest in it.
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Was just thinking about this. Usenet guarantees a certain amount of time ~10 years, and a torrent only lasts as long as people are willing to seed. The problem is, long term seeding takes up too much individual space, and I never know when it's necessary. Obviously I'm not wasting 500GB of storage to seed something with 100+ seeders. More trackers should offer bonus points for things with less than 2-3 seeders to ensure long term survival of the media.
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Usenet doesn't guarantee any time at all. Content is purged regularly if it's not being downloaded.
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Don’t even have to go that far back. Look at Netflix removing the DnD Community episode because Chang dresses as a drow elf (black skin, white hair). He even says he’s a drow in the episode yet Netflix removed it from the series since it was “racist”. Without pirates that episode would quickly be forgotten.
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Shirley even says "we just gonna ignore this hate crime right here?" like it's 100% meant to be a meta joke about blackface. But, even comedic irony isn't allowed in this context with streaming services. Disney cut like 5 episodes of Sunny from streaming because Dee in brownface and Mac in blackface.
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Oh true, I didn't even think about preservation of different versions of episodes
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I think an Asian man wearing drowface is a complicated issue with no right answers. But the multiple times Pierce wears explicit brownface are way worse, and if anything was to be removed, they should have gone first.
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I agree with you that it's a complicated issue with no right answer and I don't think that warrants the total destruction of the piece of media in question. And I don't think you meant that it did either, but it seems that people think you did.
This situation reminds me of the old episodes of Mickey Mouse (Steamboat Willy? I can't remember the exact cartoon the episodes came from, if they even came from a specific series at all and weren't just one-offs) where Disney has a disclaimer on them if they're ever shown anywhere about how they are for archival purposes only and that they reflect the views and culture of the time that they were made in, and how that doesn't make those views okay. Because they're super fuckin' racist cartoons, like full on black people = monkeys racist, and Disney knows that that's not okay (more like they know that showing that would lose them money at any rate), but that doesn't mean that they're not worth preserving so that we don't lose sight of what the past actually was like and allow people to slap rose colored glasses on the "better days" or something.
As others have mentioned too, it also depends on how the depiction is used. Like when there was all that outrage over the Cyberpunk 2077 Chimaera "Mix it Up" posters of the girl with the giant "package" under her one piece. Yes, those posters are gross sexual objectification and horribly transphobic, but that's the point. They're intended to show how fucked up the dystopia of 2077 America is and how advertising has always used sexual objectification to sell products, and if a company thinks that using trans people's bodies will sell a product, they absolutely will. Just like they do every year with Rainbow Capitalism during Pride.
There are times when the destruction of something horrible is absolutely the way to go, like when Germany destroyed all the Nazi statues right after WW2 and put a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust where Hitler's bunker had been. But even then, it's vital to preserve that past so it can't be washed away. The Germans also took photos of the statues they destroyed, to preserve it so that something like that can't happen again. We can't learn from our mistakes if there's no evidence that they even happened.
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Yes this is a real concern, this is called "cultural genocide" or destruction and is the kind of thing that expressive regimes do to their history or culture in order to mold generations of people to their desire... I wonder what's going on with the world right now.
Cultural genocide involves the eradication and destruction of cultural artifacts, such as books, artworks, and structures.[5]
The phrase "cultural destruction" refers to an incidence of a culture being seriously damaged or destroyed as a result of external or internal forces. Cultural destruction was a common feature of the colonial era and the conquest of the Americas.
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That's another good post, thanks for sharing
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While I agree that piracy can be preservation of media, it's most often not the case.
Streaming torrents directly or through real-debrid doesn't help preserve media at all. Leeching only without keeping torrents alive also doesn't keep media accessible.
Some people might store media for a few decades and then reupload, but most people never create new torrents.
I'd say the pirates who help preserve media are a small subset of pirates.
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read OP's post. if it not were for privacy in the first place and people ripping media, there wouldn't be any copy left of those shows.
Of course not all pirates archive, but there's an important percentage that do. Non-pirates are running out of options because each year less and less audiovisual productions release as physical media (old DVDs, more recently blue rays) and are only available through a subscription model where you do not own the actual content.
So piracy is pretty much the only route available to archive a lot of content.
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You're right, piracy is often the only way to archive media. Many releases aren't available on BluRay in all regions. It's thanks to those people who go through the trouble and rip media.
I meant to comment above on how not all piracy helps preserve media.
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I can't tell if you are saying only ripping content helps preserve it or that seeding does too. I download things but seed them as long as possible. (Technically until I run out of disk space, but that hasn't happened yet and I think I will upgrade before it does.) Considering how many pirates download things and keep seeding, I think the pirates that don't help preserve stuff could be the minority.
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Seeding definitely helps preserve media. My comment meant to say that many people pirate media without seeding like ddl, usenet or leeching on public trackers. E.g. because they don't have good upload or not enough storage.
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The problem with BitTorrent is that seeding libraries usually don't survive a change or upgrade of the client, you'd have to find all the original .torrents and point the client at the right folders, praying it doesn't overwrite the with empty files for some reason.
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There's all the remasters and tweaks as well. Star Wars is the obvious example, but even things like Red Dwarf got messed with with awful looking CGI plastered in.
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At least they realised Red Dwarf tinkering was a bad idea and the originals still safely exist. I think they said they used the original negatives for Star Wars which were spliced and used for the Special Editions. They kept telling the public the original negatives for untouched Star Wars no longer exist. I can't believe that's true though. George keeps a copy of everything. There even a cut of Star Wars that used rear screen protection instead of blue screen!
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The 4k77 guys pretty much provided what fans have been asking for. Lucas had his chance and chose to charge the fans for something they didn’t ask for.
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Odds are George personally owns the originals and was able to retain them as part of the terms of the sale to Disney.
He doesn't want them to be released and this is how he prevents it
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Reminds me of Fraggle Rock. Due to the television station that produced the show being taken over many times over the years, most of the original broadcast masters have been lost. I think all episodes have been found but they're mostly at home VHS recordings.
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Oh wow. I've never even heard of that show. I chose Doctor Who for my post because of it's cultural influence and because I love the show, but it's just crazy to think how much more lesser known media gets lost the same way
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I don't see any evidence supporting this, but I also don't recall ever seeing reruns in the US.
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I forgot to mention, this was specifically relevant to the UK version of Fraggle Rock as each country has different wraparounds.
The British inserts were filmed first at the TVS Television Theatre in Gillingham, Kent, and later at their larger studio complex in Maidstone (the former since closed and demolished) and presents Fraggle Rock as a rock-filled sea island with a lighthouse. Exterior footage was that of St Anthony's Lighthouse located near Falmouth in Cornwall. The lighthouse keeper is The Captain (played by Fulton Mackay), a retired sailor who lives with his faithful dog Sprocket. In the third season, as MacKay had died in 1987, the role was played by John Gordon Sinclair as P.K., (the Captain's nephew) and in the fourth and final season by Simon O'Brien as B.J. (son of the lighthouse's owner, Mr. Bertwhistle). In 2014, 35 of these British wraparounds were still missing, believed wiped, although subsequent recoveries have gradually reduced this number.[7] As of December 2020, all 96 wraparounds have been found and handed over to the BFI, confirming that the entire UK production still exists in some shape or form.[8] Nickelodeon repeated it in the UK from 1993, as did Boomerang and Cartoonito in 2007. The episodes shown were the original North American versions.
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I had the brilliant idea the other day of passing an amendment to the copywrite laws to include "independent distributors" for media that is abandoned or removed from active sale/distribution by its copywrite holder. The stipulation is that "independent distributors" are not allowed to make money in any way from the provided service and if the holder wants to rerelease something or remake it, the ID has to pull that title until the holder pulls it from circulation again. I would also put the stipulation on holders that any release has to be materially similar and at a fair market price. They are not allowed to re-release a game from 30 years ago at full modern retail, remakes have to be the same game to count (FFVII:remake would not count, but the updated PC releases of FFVII would), and the sales must be readily available to all citizens in the country (so releasing something on your JP store exclusively does not preclude the independent distribution in the states).
The concept is exactly this. Legalize the preservation of media and art for future generations and allow free access to it, something akin to a digital online museum of games, movies, television shows, and commercials. If a content owner is not willing to make money from it, then there can be no damages.
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My mans... you just described GOG.
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I hadn't ever checked out GOG. Cool stuff, but looking at their free stuff, I beg to differ on your interpretation. I am describing the legalization of the distribution of ROMs, movies/tv shows that are either unairing or undistributed in modern formats, or package software that is either abandoned or has had support dropped for it. Essentially, being able to get a copy of Windows 95 or an old version of Photoshop.
Also, GOG looks to primarily be a storefront for game sales, not a free-access repository. The major stipulation in my idea is that the "independent distributor" is not allowed to profit from the content. So no selling it. It has to be done entirely at their own expense.
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I don't have the originals, but I am happy to say I have all of the 1963 and 2005 Doctor Whos (with the exception of some new stuff... I should really get sonarr.) They are on i2p and I am still seeding if anyone wants them.
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Except of course the missing/lost episodes from the 1963 run, although from what I've heard, some of them have been found!
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I checked and I have at least some of the ones wikipedia lists as missing if I didn't read it wrong.
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I had them all, until the disk I had them on died... Will implement i2p tomorrow.
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This is extremely common with media that is seen as "artless" mass market as well. Dr. Who was pulp and not deemed worth preserving.
Another example is the show that made me get into model making: Art Attack. A disney show made in the UK that was never collected or released in the original version.
There are some torrents of the Hindi version apparently, but that's all.
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Reminds me of how something like 60% of video games only exist as emulators, because companies never bothered to preserve them in any form. There was even a remake of a game in the past few years that still had the Skidrow logo in it, because the devs had to go and torrent a pirated copy of the game since the original code was gone and they forgot to remove the cracker's logo. There was also the infamous GTA remake that was made from the phone version of the game for the same reason.
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That is hilarious
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Oh wow I didn't know that. That's both sad and hilarious that they used a pirated version
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Thanks for adding the link.
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WHO CARES? IT'S JUST A SHOW. THERE ARE OTHERS. RAPE THE HETEROSEXUAL PIRATES UP THE ASS AND REFUSE THEM FOOD UNTIL THEY QUIT. WE WILL ALL DIE ANYWAY. RAPE THE PIRATES!
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Did you forget your meds today?
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MEDICATION IS ADDICTION
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