30 to 40 Percent of VHS Films Will Never See Another Format | Hacker News Reader

30 to 40 Percent of VHS Films Will Never See Another Format

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32 pointsjjp999927 comments

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Well, the studios themselves have the rights, so why they don't digitize it is strange to me. Well, the big ones I can see, obviously they don't see enough $ in it. But small, national ones like the BRT in BE or something, they have a duty to the tax payer (who pays to make these shows happen) even to do this in my eyes.

I would pay for 'series and movies' nobody wants to see and so would many others, so if not only for posterity, then do it for some profit. I wouldn't sign up for some modern subscription, but if these were included I would. It's just a matter of being complete.

But yes, you are right, the copyright issue sucks; no-one cares about these series/movies, so why not remove the (c).

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.

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.

>Stuff like 'secret valley' (AU tv series) is unfindable.

This makes me really, really sad. Although I would likely find it juvenile and not as good as I remembered it, it was one of the best things on TV growing up and I'd love to share it with my future kids. Flour-bomb fight!

Edit: So it's listed on the AFSA website... does this mean the masters are still in the archive?

They probably have the masters; I think they usually do, at least they think so. There are stories of leaks in the back of basements etc rendering 1000s of hours of series/movies useless. That's why they should take action NOW and not waste time. Even if they only keep it locally and not sell it, it needs to be preserved! Damn it!

Brendon Chase (UK, 80s) is another one.

And there was a series in the 80s I remember as being called 'Saturday' (UK I think, about children growing up in some village and (very young) puppy love, very innocent series which I liked so much I quit my swimming lessons for it as it was on the same night and we didn't have a VCR; it was aroudn the same time as the Tripods on TV me thinks) which, due to the title, I never found anything about :( I would love to find that back as well. Hmmm. Must... Go... To... TV... Forums...

They often don't have the rights to do that, actors contracts and the like often have clauses with regards to royalties from video sales and repeat showings, most of them don't have any structure to allow for online streaming (plus you have legal issues over music used, etc). The legal work involved would cost far more than the technical work required.

Doesn't prevent them from digitizing and storing on something less volatile than old film reel.

But it does prevent exactly that. It costs money to do the conversion. Costs must be offset by revenue, and of course if revenue is involved in business, there must be enough revenue to generate profit. And if the legal agreements with the talent don't allow anything other than VHS sales and rentals, then it's not worth the effort to convert.

Guess you have a point there. I'm thinking way too much from a 'good for the world' POV. So only thing we can do is start a 'closed off' site which connects people interested in this, so we can coordinate buying of DVDs for 'personal' use from studio's (as I said before, I tried that in NL, BE and FR and they are willing to accomodate for high prices) and then copy them for interested parties. Yes, i'm advocating copying here, but how else to force them to digitize them? What can be done?

On a slightly related topic; HN (and Reddit) is FULL with domain experts; where are the people who work at these studios and television makers? Do they actually ever come here? Why don't they chime in ever? I would love to have a discussion with people working in the industry. They seem to be so focused on money that they don't want to hear reason, so I would definitely like to know if all management thinks like that for instance.

And slightly related to that last part:

In the Netherlands we have this idiot who is the ceo of Brein which is the Dutch anti piracy organisation; he sometimes does some comments or interviews, but he just quits after he is torpedoed down as the guy knows nothing. (And probably cannot do anything either tbh.) But one of the things he can never answer is; 'people will pay for anything, if you make it easy; as long as BitTorrent is 100x faster/easier than going the legal route, people will download illegally'. Must be industry people who have some ideas about that.

They have to pay someone to do it, they have to pay someone to decide to do it, they have to pay someone to find the equipment to do it with, they have to pay someone to think about it, they have to pay lawyers to license it, and they have to pay lawyers to think about licensing.

I imagine in many cases the cost (and opportunity cost) of just thinking about it isn't worth what studios and other holders believe they'll make from the effort.

Digitized old content competes with new content. For the entertainment industry, the less content there is in the world the better. They're not going to intentionally weaken their position by introducing more.

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?

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!

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.

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.

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.

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

Officially.

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

And many of them don't.

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...

I'm not too sure. The Pirate Bay gives 890 results for "VHS" but Karagarga (private tracker) gives 5776 films with VHS sources. I'm sure there are plenty of VHS's on YouTube but YouTube feels ephemeral with the possibility of a DMCA request at any time.

So some of it is being archived by a very small subset of the pirate population. It would certainly be a lot easier if we didn't have to do it so far underground.

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

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