I've only barely skimmed the surface of the preservation world, but the irreverent attitude taken by the industry towards audiovisual media releases frustrates me greatly. That more accurate older releases are made unobtainable in favor of newer botched versions just adds insult to injury.
I'm grateful that diminishing returns were hit earlier with audio, though, which limits the blast radius for music releases. Most classic albums have a range of different masterings available on audio CD, many of which are available cheaply secondhand, which makes getting ahold of a good/accurate release considerably less daunting.
Movies and especially TV shows on the other hand are a mess. It shouldn't be a miracle to get a high-quality, faithful official remaster like the one Star Trek: TNG got.
> Movies and especially TV shows on the other hand are a mess. It shouldn't be a miracle to get a high-quality, faithful official remaster like the one Star Trek: TNG got.
TV shows are even worse because of the soundtrack.
Oh you watched this show with the iconic soundtrack? Too bad it's only available on the VHS release from 1995, they couldn't get the rights anymore so here is the same show but worse with different music
Even video games are not exempt from that. GTA games has tons of music removed from the radios with later digital re-releases so currently the original console disc versions are the only way to play the games as they were released back then <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/GTATrilogy/comments/1gsqdc5/what_songs_been_removed/lxgbwgg/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/GTATrilogy/comments/1gsqdc5/what_so...
Yeah, I'm in agreement with the blog post in that I don't advocate for dismantling of copyright, but there are absurdities within the system like this that are in dire need of attention.
Honestly I think it's fine. If corps are going to make poor decisions with their IP, oh well, their choice and their loss. There's plenty to go around.
It's not their IP though, the rest of us have only granted them a temporary monopoly and its in our interest that we still have the original works after that time.
Shortening of copyright would fix many of these issues. Games and movies make almost all of their lifetime earnings in the first few years, and the dribble that's left afterwards is less important than preservation and public access.
It's very hard to justify copyright in 2026 over music used in a 1980s TV show. Shows were aired once or twice (summer reruns), with additional syndication runs for particularly popular shows, and that was it. Nobody expected to make a dime from a show 40 years later. Copyright has grown absurdly out of proportion of the economic reality for which these works were originally produced.
> Nobody expected to make a dime from a show 40 years later.
Probably? But to devil's advocate here, I grew up watching reruns in 1990 from the 1950s on Nick at Nite or UHF stations. You could make a case that not only the actors but bands who allowed music to be used would deserve residuals, and with reruns that worked fine. The format change from TV to DVD and then to Streaming is what blew it all up.
Home video releases of whole series weren't envisioned until basically the 2000s. Most TV shows that did have releases on video would just pick a couple good episodes at a time, and sell those. A reasonable job to track down a half-dozen rights holders, and if you couldn't find them or get the rights, I assume they'd just pick a different episode.
The way the original terms were negotiated, the rights were just licensed specifically "for television" because that seemed like all that was needed, and the amount of work to locate each rightsholder to renegotiate is just astronomical. Thankfully now every show is making sure to get rights for streaming (and physical media... Right? Right?) but it's a shame what happened to everything from the 1970s-1990s. Only piracy can save us.
In the UK Red Dwarf had full series on VHS from 1991, albeit a messy release and taking some years to catch up with what was currently airing:
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Dwarf#Home_video_releases" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Dwarf#Home_video_releases
cosmic_cheese · · focus · HN ↗
I'm grateful that diminishing returns were hit earlier with audio, though, which limits the blast radius for music releases. Most classic albums have a range of different masterings available on audio CD, many of which are available cheaply secondhand, which makes getting ahold of a good/accurate release considerably less daunting.
Movies and especially TV shows on the other hand are a mess. It shouldn't be a miracle to get a high-quality, faithful official remaster like the one Star Trek: TNG got.
haunter · · focus · HN ↗
TV shows are even worse because of the soundtrack.
Oh you watched this show with the iconic soundtrack? Too bad it's only available on the VHS release from 1995, they couldn't get the rights anymore so here is the same show but worse with different music
Even video games are not exempt from that. GTA games has tons of music removed from the radios with later digital re-releases so currently the original console disc versions are the only way to play the games as they were released back then <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/GTATrilogy/comments/1gsqdc5/what_songs_been_removed/lxgbwgg/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/GTATrilogy/comments/1gsqdc5/what_so...
cosmic_cheese · · focus · HN ↗
mahboi · · focus · HN ↗
someonebaggy · · focus · HN ↗
account42 · · focus · HN ↗
mopsi · · focus · HN ↗
It's very hard to justify copyright in 2026 over music used in a 1980s TV show. Shows were aired once or twice (summer reruns), with additional syndication runs for particularly popular shows, and that was it. Nobody expected to make a dime from a show 40 years later. Copyright has grown absurdly out of proportion of the economic reality for which these works were originally produced.
xp84 · · focus · HN ↗
Probably? But to devil's advocate here, I grew up watching reruns in 1990 from the 1950s on Nick at Nite or UHF stations. You could make a case that not only the actors but bands who allowed music to be used would deserve residuals, and with reruns that worked fine. The format change from TV to DVD and then to Streaming is what blew it all up.
Home video releases of whole series weren't envisioned until basically the 2000s. Most TV shows that did have releases on video would just pick a couple good episodes at a time, and sell those. A reasonable job to track down a half-dozen rights holders, and if you couldn't find them or get the rights, I assume they'd just pick a different episode.
The way the original terms were negotiated, the rights were just licensed specifically "for television" because that seemed like all that was needed, and the amount of work to locate each rightsholder to renegotiate is just astronomical. Thankfully now every show is making sure to get rights for streaming (and physical media... Right? Right?) but it's a shame what happened to everything from the 1970s-1990s. Only piracy can save us.
crtasm · · focus · HN ↗