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Pirating the Pirates

711 points · 405 comments · piotrgrabowski

  1. dewey · · focus · HN ↗
    > When I came to work for Arrow, I was bringing a lot of awareness of the methods of fan preservationists on the torrent sites

    Very smooth way of using your torrenting skills on your CV.

    1. sedawkgrep · · focus · HN ↗
      I know this is the easy take, but there really are people who are passionate about preservation beyond just acquiring things for their own use.

      I'm not one of those people. :D But I do know one; he's a professional librarian.

      1. Forgeties79 · · focus · HN ↗
        This is true but people also use it as a magic shield to (needlessly IMO) justify their piracy, even though they are 1) only downloading things they happen to like and 2) don’t even follow a basic 3-2-1 backup protocol, let alone anything remotely resembling SOP for preservation.

        I bet not even 1 in 1000 people pirating are doing it primarily as a preservation exercise.

        1. ndsipa_pomu · · focus · HN ↗
          Meanwhile, there's examples of long lost footage being found again precisely because people were recording/copying/pirating for their own purposes. I'm thinking explicitly of Doctor Who footage that the BBC overwrote (tape was expensive), but years later was found on privately recorded video tapes left in someone's shed.

          Personally, I enjoy pirating less well-known scifi/horror films and series. It's surprising how relatively recent productions can "disappear" when there's no streaming company interested in it. My usual example of disappearing TV is the third season of "Monkey Dust". The music rights weren't agreed, so the third season never made it to DVD and is impossible to watch legally, but hopefully people like me will keep it available nonetheless.

          There's also companies that like to censor previous output, such as Disney and their pro-Nazi propaganda.

          1. Forgeties79 · · focus · HN ↗
            It took a lot more effort and care to pirate Doctor Who back then (let alone preserve it) then it does now ha
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