Comment by filmgirlcw | Hacker News Reader

Comment by filmgirlcw | Hacker News Reader

I wasn’t quite alive when this happened so I have to go off of the stories my parents told me (but neither are tech savvy and would have no reason to lie), but when VHS was first a thing in the early 80s, my parents had two VCRs (they had a Betamax in the late 70s too I think — they aren’t tech savvy but my dad loves his gadgets) and used to go to the local video store regularly to make copies of the tapes. Apparently there was a whole informal trading ring of tapes amongst the teenage employees and the rich yuppies in their 30s (my parents and their friends).

The net result was I had tapes copies of lots of the Disney movies that didn’t come to home video, in some cases, for more than a decade after I was born.

I figured out how to program and dub tapes on the VCR when I was 3 or 4, my first real interaction with technology.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that I helped run a massive Direct Connect hub off the Georgia Tech/Georgia State Dora backbones my freshmen year of college.

In the 80's, rural America was copying cassettes for video and music at home. You could go to flea markets and buy copied products but many homes had tech to record/duplicate.

And then it got wild with cheap media for CD-ROM and DVD duplication just as Napster and other services along with the proliferation of internet connectivity.

In elementary school we made and traded mix tapes of songs from the radio. We rarely traded duped video cassettes.

When I grew up in the 80s, every movie we ever had was a VHS copy from a friend. Along with every cassette tape and all the Commodore 64 software. I remember the day my old man’s cool friend stopped by and handed me a box of about 100 5.25” floppy disks full of games and software.

I didn’t learn until I was practically an adult that some silly people actually bought movies and software. Now it’s the norm.

Back in the early 80s (pre-Blockbuster) there were independent video stores. They were great, because you could "reserve" a video for a night and they would hold it for you, unlike Blockbuster where you had to hover like a vulture by the return counter.... Anyway, back on topic, one of these independent video stores I believe was the source of several pirated movies as well, including a copy of "ET" filmed in the theater which was awful quality.

> Apparently there was a whole informal trading ring of tapes amongst the teenage employees and the rich yuppies in their 30s (my parents and their friends).

My parents were not rich yuppies by any stretch, but were also part of a similar video cassette trading ring. They were probably really common.

Totally — I was more referring to the segment of people that had not one but two VCRs in 1983 in order to facility the copying, not the broader network of traders.

> I wasn’t quite alive when this happened so

But also not completely dead I see

I mean, my mom was pregnant with me for some of this so yeah.

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