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Used to be considered simply prudent to back up the vhs tapes you bought and people were encouraged to tape their favorite shows off the tv. Now some random CEO of the month has the right to bury decades worth of creative works?
In the long run, shit like this is theft from the Public Domain.
Yeah, there really should be some expectation of stewardship in exchange for absurd post-Disney copyright durations.
What a brilliant way to put it, "theft from the public domain". I'm gonna have to remember that one.
Backup vhs tapes? They put copy protections on those too, which made that difficult. In the 90s I had two VCRs, I ran the output of one to the input of the other to record duplicates. Some of the copy protection schemes would fuck with the signal or the tracking.
I had a friend with a huge copied VHS library. He ordered his equipment from Germany. No macrovision on equipment there so his copies were very good.
Recent events with streaming services has really been the best argument for self hosting your own content
Every day I inch closer and closer to setting up my own plex server (or something else if there's a better alternative idk)
but the term "raspberry pi" makes me scared and confused
Plex is good but another option is jellyfin
Personally I just setup a PC as a NAS‡ and installed VLC on my TV so that I can just browse the NAS and play the files directly
Is it efficient? No.
Is it the best way? Also no.
Does it work? Yes, surprisingly well in fact.
‡ The first time was simply a network shared folder, the second time was using TrueNAS.
This is why pirating is justified. If you want your shows to last forever, torrent them, and keep them seeded.
I’ve looked around quite a bit for The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. No one seems to have the complete series. The show ran nightly for 30 years and amassed 6714 episodes so it would be quite a large torrent.
I wish this worked, but it only does for things that are popular.
As it stands I think I'm just going to have to back up my entire media collection for fear of not being able to get a copy during retirement - when I plan to watch a shit tonne of TV.
Can’t keep archives of Saturday morning cartoons we all grew up with and loved; will sue you for keeping copies of them.
Definitely ok to being three mile island back online for AI though, that’s the ticket to a better humanity!
For real why has everyone with any kind of money gone psycho? Have the bad guys started winning even harder?
I'm not against nuclear power, but could they have concocted a worse set of motivations? Restarting Three Mile Island to power Microsoft's AI ambitions? Shit reads like something a super villan would cook up.
Wait, the three mile island thing wasn't a joke?
Line go up
The more they delete, the more they can resell every few years as "new" while charging ever more exorbitant prices for!
Buy it before it goes back in the Disney vault!
The Disney Vault!
Write that down!
This is why I still download movies and try to keep them. They make up the bulk of the crap I keep on my hard drives.
And there was a time when the computer science world wanted to avoid this... and it was 1990 (yes, almost 35 years ago) when the term digital dark age was coined. It was in response to several things. Firstly: the first voyager probe was sent and the code used to store the information could not be disciphered by (then) the latest computers, which resulted in a problem. The second thing is that governments all around the world were starting to be heavily computerized and the older computers used in the 1960s were 100% incompatible with newer systems.
In the US and UK in 1960 the first census were done by computers, and by just 1976 there were only two computers in the world that could read that data, and one of them was a museum piece.
The FOSS community has done far more to combat this with emulation over the past 30 years than any corporation has ever done. Whether it is for video games like MAME, MESS, or whatever console emulator you want to mention, or by OSes like MS-DOS and Amiga Lemon and countless others that emulate almost every system ever created.
Now these fucks are just shitting all streaming media and forcing normal people to have to break the law by pirating the stuff just to keep the stuff from vanishing into oblivion.
The simple answer to this is to change the tax code to not allow for write offs for completed projects. And to shorten how long copyright lasts (fuck Disney so much for that one)
Also set up a standardized licensing process that breaks the mini-monopolies of exclusive content.
Personally, I'd also limit copyright to specific works and not the characters, setting, etc. Then protect trademarks and use those to establish canon. Like in the MCU and DC universes, Spiderman and Batman don't exist together, but in the Superhero Fan Universe, they are roommates and play genius billionaire vs superhuman with a sixth sense prank wars on each other.
Enshittification continues
Wait until you realize that most of your favorite movies and shows have been re edited or messed with.
I was watching the office for the 100th time and one of my favorite jokes was just straight up removed from the show during this rewatch. So just in the last few months they've gone back and edited the show.
I was also rewatching breaking bad and they've changed some of the music as well.
Music licensing in media like this gets bullshit quickly. If it was signed in for the original run, fucking leave it.
I had a coworker who cited music licensing as the sole reason he can't find his favorite show anymore: The Drew Carrey Show. Whatever schmuck owns the music licensing refuses to cooperate with the rest of the show owners, so it can't be streamed or distributed anywhere.
Another example would be Scrubs, most of the songs used in the show (including key moments and the OG songs were perfect for them) have been edited out and replaced because of licensing issues. Unless you've got the DVDs or pirated older versions, you're stuck with the new music and it's not the same.
I think that's why you'd be hard pressed to find Daria in its original form too: music licensing.
Dude, Halo: Master Chief Collection removed a LOT of perfectly timed tracks from key moments of Halo 2, because they were Breaking Benjamin songs.
I remember when a pair of Hunters is just about to bust open these massive gates in New Mombasa...here comes the sick instrumental from "Blow Me Away"...!
...No, just some vaguely Halo-esque drumbeat on loop.
The music licensing industry has pretty much always been Satan, but the sheer arrogance to think they have the right to claw audio out of existing works because they're not getting infinite revenue out of it is a new friggin low.
They're editing entertainment history to begin with. Deletion is bad enough, but possibly even more nefarious is the blatant, unapologetically sneaky editing of existing media mentioned in this thread. Jussst a little bit at a time.
Unlike many videogames, TV shows, music, movies, don't get "version / revision numbers." Can you trust your archives to be original?
Adjust for today's-sensibilities here, remove a now-naughty-word there..."oh, we don't wanna pay for that song that released in 5 years before this 36 year old television program...better it never existed!"
Their goal seems to be relegating the Internet to simply being a flow of "What's trending and making money NOW" and nothing else. Every ~~byte~~ electron has a dollar value.
They want generations growing up in a world where the corporate narrative is all that ever was and will be.
Today it's talk shows and cartoons.
Tomorrow it's biographies and documentaries. Family histories? Newspapers?
We need to stop this NOW.
Media conglomerates can't even be relied on to be stewards of their own legacy. They're coming for ours.
So, who's up for another reread/watch of Farenheit 451 or Equalibrium?
I still have dvds and a dvd player like an old person for just this reason.
Preservation is an invasive and destructive process. Recreating the experience of watching 'The Daily Show' in the 90s or early '00s is already impossible. Language and culture mildew and rot just like leather and wood.
EDIT: People don't seem to understand what I'm talking about. Even the people who are responding in good faith seem confused. That's on me. So I thought I'd try to clarify with an example.
Take the Mona Lisa. Perhaps one of the most preserved objects in history. It's so well preserved that it's impossible to see. Sure, you can look at it, but you won't see it. Taking a picture of the painting is encouraged, but you can't get a look at it in your camera roll either.
If you saw the actual painting hanging on a friend's wall, your first thought would probably not be "what a masterpiece", but "why didn't they remove the default print that came with the frame"? If you go to Paris, you can wait in line to have the "Mona Lisa experience" but the painting you saw wasn't hanging on the wall, what you'll see is the Mona Lisa you brought with you.
(yes, I stole this example from 'were in hell' youtube channel)
This is stupid as hell.
I'm the genealogist of my family. There are things about what life was like when my grandmother was young that now only I know (since she's passed on). As I research through more and more of my family history, going back further and further, the less and less I know about what life was like when my ancestors were around, especially the minutiae of every day life. But I WANT to know what life was like. It's fascinating and, more importantly, we don't always know now what will be important in the future so how can we learn from the mistakes of the past if we don't even know they existed? My kids will never know directly what living life in the 90s as a teen was like. But I do. I remember. But I won't be here forever and if they ever want to have even a tiny inkling of what it was like, I need to ensure that the stories, the accounts, the events, the nuance, the opinions..... are recorded and passed on, as my grandmother did with me.
The saying, "History is written by the victor" is absolutely true. But if we had the little tiny details from the perspectives of lots of different people, the victor cannot rewrite history for their benefit and in their image. History, no matter how big or small, matters.
If you don't care. Cool for you bro. Ignore it. But for the rest of us who want to learn, recording and archiving matters. I feel nothing but honour in my obligation to ensure events and history is passed on for future generations.
History is written by those that write stuff down.
obviously a news show isn't going to feel the same rewatching it. that's not the point lol.
that would be like saying it's dumb to preserve newspapers in libraries because it's not going to feel as good rereading the "Hitler is dead" headline. people don't look at old news to have a good time.
boy was it silly of us to preserve that kind of thing and it totally never comes in handy/s
that's not even what people are upset about anyway. comedy Central mostly makes entertainment programming that isn't news based and can still be enjoyed whenever. believe it or not, comedy Central has a lot of content that will stand the test of time. especially when looking at their stand-up catalogue.
this is the destruction of a library. a digital one, but a library none the less. that's what people are mad about.
but you're right. we should just dump all of our old movies and shows. they're worthless moldy junk anyway... 🙄
Just a simple lowly troll, nothing of importance to see here
Preservation is an invasive and destructive process. Recreating the experience of watching 'The Daily Show' in the 90s or early '00s is already impossible. Language and culture mildew and rot just like leather and wood.
EDIT: People don't seem to understand what I'm talking about. Even the people who are responding in good faith seem confused. That's on me. So I thought I'd try to clarify with an example.
Take the Mona Lisa. Perhaps one of the most preserved objects in history. It's so well preserved that it's impossible to see. Sure, you can look at it, but you won't see it. Taking a picture of the painting is encouraged, but you can't get a look at it in your camera roll either.
If you saw the actual painting hanging on a friend's wall, your first thought would probably not be "what a masterpiece", but "why didn't they remove the default print that came with the frame"? If you go to Paris, you can wait in line to have the "Mona Lisa experience" but the painting you saw wasn't hanging on the wall, what you'll see is the Mona Lisa you brought with you.
(yes, I stole this example from 'were in hell' youtube channel)
Figured I'd make a copy. Who knows, the OP might change it in the future. Gotta preserve the past and all.
Even considering your edits, it's still a stupid argument. By that same logic nothing should be preserved. Watching LotR now is not the same as watching it when it first came out, which should have never been made according to you because by that time the book should have already been destroyed since you wouldn't want to preserve it for 50 years, but Tolkien shouldn't have even written it, since they were based on ideas and drafts he did during the first world war exploring how war changes men and power corrupts, which obviously is only valid in that context and nowhere else so it should be destroyed since preserving it would be invasive and destructive, no?.
Preserving something can never be destructive, it's the opposite of it. If the Mona Lisa was destroyed you wouldn't even know it existed, so how can having preserved it be destructive when the alternative is oblivion?
And I agree that the Mona Lisa is no big deal, you know who else agrees? People from that time. It's widely known that the Mona Lisa was one of Da Vinci's less famous works, and until Napoleon made a big deal out of it it was just a random painting in a random museum. So I get part of your point, that people who make a big deal out of the Mona Lisa are only there to see the famous painting, but that doesn't mean that there's no reason to preserve it, or that there are no people who go there to see the actual Mona Lisa.
They will charge you again for the remake. So nice you have payed twice...
Get the physical medium
Thanks, Obama.