Re: Stupid Big Media
Even if think about it from their end of things, consider for a moment what people are doing here. They're trading often barely watchable copies of 3rd generation VHS duplicates, just to get a vague glimpse of a show which obviously means something to them. There's money in that. Yet countless hundreds, thousands of shows even, are gone without a trace. They're likely sitting in a tape vault somewhere, ready to be "monetised".
On the other hand, Given that those tapes are apparently not worth bothering to do anything with, what's it to them if a few people want to share some old episodes of some forgotten kids show from the 90s or a failed sitcom from the 80s? They weren't trying to make money off them anyway, so what are they losing? Any potential loss they think they're making is their own fault for not having attempted to sell it to people in the first place. It wouldn't even be as bad if the copyright terms on this stuff weren't so ridiculously long.
I don't want to come across as "entitled" here, but these shows were made to be consumed, so we should let them be consumed. They have made impressions on millions of peoples' lives, however insignificant a dodgy telly programme from some distant recess of a failing memory might seem. We have the technology to make this stuff available, as is evident by the fact that TheBoz exists, and the many services which do offer legitimately licensed content. Please, content owners, throw us a bone here, either do it and charge us, or leave us be to do the digital equivalent of swapping video tapes.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
