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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
* rolls eyes in r/datahorder *
On a related topic fck torrents. They are the worst for long-term piracy. I'm trying to find old and rare shows that were uploaded over a decade ago, and everything is dead.
Bring back the mule!! The fact I can share things without needing to care about their changing name and location is fantastic. It's so empty now, compared to 15-20 years ago :(
I'm going to have to look into newsgroup (EDIT: usenet, I mean) stuff again soon. Or IRC. Money or effort. :(
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.
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.
No, copying files is
