

30 to 40 Percent of VHS Films Will Never See Another Format - jjp9999
http://techzwn.com/2012/02/interview-filmmakers-tell-of-the-home-video-revolution/

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talmand
For me, a huge justification for piracy: archives. If the content license
holders won't do it then someone has to preserve this stuff before it
disappears.

I've never understood why a content creator would not digitize their archives
and then offer it through streaming somehow. After a while it would seem the
eventual revenue might offset the cost of the archiving. Free backup.

Imagine if one of the older studios suddenly offered every bit of content they
had in their vaults, that still could be digitized, on Netflix, Hulu or even
their own site? In some cases that would be five decades of content. We're
talking hundreds/thousands of movies and tv shows that the current generation
doesn't even know exist.

But no, the film sits in a salt mine somewhere slowing rotting away.

~~~
gerggerg
_For me, a huge justification for piracy: archives._

Not just you, but also the US supreme court. If you already own a copy of that
movie on any format it's legal to have 1 digital backup and you can acquire
that backup by downloading it. Where most people get in trouble is by re-
uploading it. If you do that, you're distributing something you have no right
to distribute. And the most successful aspect of bittorrent is how efficiently
it turns you into a distributer.

~~~
talmand
That's true, but not quite what I meant. It's conceivable that if everyone
made a digital backup of content then it almost certainly be available in one
form of another.

I'm speaking more of the topic of the article. If the content holder has
decided to no longer make content they control available to the masses then it
is almost a moral obligation for someone to digitize that content for
uploading to the Internet so that is not lost. How much content have we
already lost that should be in the public domain but no one has the content
any longer to digitize?

But I'm not talking just movies and tv shows. This could easily cover other
mundane topics of life such as sporting events, interviews, documentaries,
newscasts and so on.

This is the time that someone in the future, say 100 years, could have a near
perfect record of what's going on today with the sheer amount of data we are
producing on a daily basis. Not just video content but emails, texting,
forums, Twitter, Facebook, etc. If only we could keep copies of content
somewhere convenient so that people can get to them whenever they wish.

Now, be clear, I'm not saying that this content should be freely available the
moment it is completed. The creator should have the right to recoup their
costs plus make profit. Especially since profit might be required for the
creator to create more. But we should have saner copyright laws in place so
that it doesn't take near 100 years for something to become public domain.
That kind of nonsense guarantees that something we feel is not important today
may be lost and missed later. The missing early episodes of Dr. Who that keeps
getting mentioned is an excellent example.

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tluyben2
People who have VHS should digitize. There is a lot on Youtube but for how
long... Old films/series are lost and will be lost forever that way. It's not
even actually only VHS: some things never made VHS and is rotting on tapes in
dark vaults under tv studios. Possible already damaged beyond repair. Stuff
like 'secret valley' (AU tv series) is unfindable. Xenon (Flemisch scifi) is
only in the BRT vaults; I mailed them about that and they responded that it
would cost E49 per episode where you have to order per post PER episode (you
cannot order multiple at the same time) and only for private use. I just would
like to see an episode for nostalgia sake; if I could buy / view it online I
would, but E49 per episode and all the hassle.

What does it matter to THEM to just have some students digitize EVERYTHING and
put it online for free or a small fee? I imagine there are 100s of 1000s of
these series and movies around the world going to waste. No matter if popular
or not, what DOES IT MATTER to put them online, it's not as if it's expensive
to do so esp if you charge some monthly or one-off fee to watch them.

~~~
Cushman
When I moved, a couple months ago, I packed up — not a series, not a tape —
the box I have that can turn VHS _into_ digital video thinking, "Maybe I
should just throw this out." I hung onto it for purely sentimental reasons, I
think. I can't really remember the last time I _saw_ a VHS cassette, let alone
used one.

And yet there must be hundreds of thousands of hours of human creation which
will, without preservation, be utterly destroyed. There's definitely something
tragic there.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the wretched work of _copyright_. This is the
still-unfulfilled promise of the information age. Let's not forget that.

~~~
jlarocco
It seems a bit of a stretch to blame copyright for this.

People upload content for which they don't own the copyright all the time.

In this case, the people with the videos just don't want to go through the
effort of digitizing and uploading. Even if the studios said, "All of our old
stuff is public domain," it wouldn't change anything.

~~~
tluyben2
I think it would. If the studios would say that, they could have the local
film academy students in to digitize; they like that and they can study stuff
which hardly anyone saw before. They did that in the Film museum in Amsterdam
and that worked fine. So yes that would work.

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jeffool
I upvote because it's interesting, but I have the sneaking suspicion that it's
all wrong. Home video didn't disappear, it went to YouTube. Browsing still
exists, as active who has looked through Netflix, Hulu, or any other service
can attest to. Having that right image is sill an important conveyance of
style.

But yet, I still upvote. I can't help but feel this potential loss of so much
film can be avoided. Maybe someone at Archive.org can work to verify rights
holders who want to donate their work to the public domain and have their work
soured there. So what if most of it's bad?

We live in the first time in history where we actually can save everything.
Why not do it?

~~~
neuronotic
Because the laws of entropy show that's not quite right?

The notion that we have the ability to save everything doesn't seem to account
for the placement of such technology in a wider context. For example, take
dimensions such as the political and economic - which are themselves subject
to physical entropy such as fundamental communication and informational
limitations manifested by the physical laws underpinning our 'reality'. It
seems to me these are examples of some significant hard barriers to reaching
such utopia’s of permanence.

So we have a socio-political-economic system that gives rise to things like
intellectual property, which in turn leads to allocation of social energy in
endeavours such as prohibiting, rather than facilitating, the perpetuation of
the content for posterity.

Of course this is a gross simplification, but hopefully functionally
illustrative. Down with IP!

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cowmixtoo
I have TONS of VHS tapes that I have been slowly digitizing over the pass 25
years. The issue I have ran up against is it is harder and harder to get VHS
players. New models are almost non-existent so you have to troll Craigslist or
eBay for used equipment.

Also, the market for good digitizing hardware is drying up too.

The moral, hurry up and digitize now before the equipment use for this purpose
drys up.

~~~
pasbesoin
I have a few dozen tapes to convert for a medical professional (treatment
documentation -- with waivers signed where used in a public context). I'd also
like to convert a few personal tapes, e.g. of my great aunts discussing times
out on the old farmstead.

Unfortunately, the tapes have some age/wear issues. And the fancy-schmancy
Sony DVD/VHS combo recorder/player I was given promptly turns these -- which
play well enough directly to the TV -- into extreme pixelation.

So, any equipment/procedure recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

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anonhacker
I had a bunch of old VHS tape that i threw away. Although I would have liked
to keep them, the biggest annoyance was the fungus/mold that grows on them if
you live anywhere with some humidity.

The point being: VHS tapes destroy themselves, its not necessarily always a
choice to not convert them.

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drinian
Remarkably, I know of at least one early-1990s film -- _Rockula_ \-- that was
never released on DVD, but is available on Netflix Instant streaming.

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InclinedPlane
Officially.

Yet many of them will live on in "pirated" digital form.

~~~
tluyben2
And many of them don't.

~~~
vidarh
Case in point: Even the BBC has managed to "lose" a lot of the early Dr Who
(they taped over a lot of it before someone started thinking about archival),
and have resorted to recovering some of it from versions taped from
broadcasts, but bits and pieces are still missing and will likely never be
found.

A large part of what has been recovered has only been recovered because of a
_lot_ of effort from both the BBC and volunteers.

This is a series with massive cultural impact in the UK.

Now consider all the less popular series that don't have scores of fans
pushing to ensure as much as possible of it is restored and made available...

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leej
is there any public or industry group registry for those movies?

