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Post by Martin Bryce on Jun 8, 2005 11:45:47 GMT
Yeh, I noticed that one just as I pressed the 'Post' button (after having proof read it a few times just to avoid this exact situation occuring) ;D
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Post by Peter Egan on Jun 8, 2005 20:15:35 GMT
Is it just coincidence that "Martin" has the same name as that annoying character in the sitcom "Ever Decreasing Circles"?
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Post by ethantyler on Jun 8, 2005 21:06:45 GMT
Well I thought this used to be a serious discussion forum about retrieving lost episodes of classic British Television, not a forum on how you can illegally copy and distribute television programmes amongst each other. I think you're missing the point, Martin. No one is discussing how to obtain illegal copies of programmes. What is actually being said is that we would all prefer for rare archive material to be released commericially (i.e. on DVD) because, in its absence, people have to rely on trading and filesharing to obtain copies. Most, if not all here, would gladly upgrade a video, CD-R, DVD-R, laserdisc or whatever copy of a series the instance it's released on DVD. People here care about archive television and want to watch it, it's understandable to question what the point of returning missing episodes if they're never going to see the light of day again. Can you justify it? |
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Post by Martin Bryce on Jun 8, 2005 21:30:34 GMT
Thanks Ethan....
This is my point exactly, as a 'Missing Episode Forum' we should be devoting our energies to ensure that those who hold the legal rights etc are aware and push to release archive television in one form or another. I do strongly feel that Bittorent and the like are creating an attitude of 'we can download it for free, so who cares ?'
I, for one, would love for the BBC to have Z-Cars DVD release, I am sure they will have one eventually.... But in the meantime I am willing to wait rather resort to Bittorent or other file sharing sites to download from.
Can we not have some collective push towards the BBC to show our interest in doing this ? Rather than resorting to distributing illegal copies between ourselves ?
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Post by Gareth Randall on Jun 10, 2005 21:00:27 GMT
Which would also help the BBC gague the sort of material worthy of a fuller release. "Gauge", I think you'll find. Honestly...  Martin made a number of very serious points about this issue that should be properly discussed... and your only response is to pick him up on a single mis-spelling? |
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Post by markoates on Jun 16, 2005 18:47:48 GMT
Just playing devil's advocate as a newbie here. If for the moment we put the question of copyright infringement on the back burner, there is a preservation issue involved that I would be inclined to think would overrride considerations of lost revenue for the tv companies involved. I'm wondering if, as previously suggested, collectors did start swapping high quality digital copies of their collected material on an exchange/ non-profit basis that would mean precious "lost" material being preserved. Think of it, rather than a collector having a single copy of a rare recording and risking it being destroyed if he plays it, there would be multiple copies knocking around - any one of which could be passed on to the relevant archive. The collectors could remain anonymous, retain their precious master recording if they were that way inclined, and the rest of us could benefit from at least the knowledge that a dedicated number of collectors were preserving these materials rather than them being in individual hands and at the risk of permanent loss.
In an ideal situation, there would be some way of thrashing out a non-exploitation deal for the creation and non-profit exchange of these dupes without attracting the interest of corporate lawyers while protecting the interests of the collectors.
If I "read" most collectors properly, the important thing to them isn't the content of the tape or film, but simply owning the actual piece of history itself. If something could be thrashed out with BBC/ITV lawyers to the effect that non-profit trading of digital copies between collectors would not be legally pursued provided (say) a third party (BFI or somebody) received an archival copy that the original owners would have access to. Collectors might be more amenable to sharing quality digital files of their precious collections if there wasn't any question of them having to loan/ hand over their material to the companies.
There would have to be minimum specs for the reference copy and safeguards for the anonymity of collectors/traders, but if it meant the preservation of materials I'd say it outweighed any consideration of copyright legalities.
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Post by Martin Bryce on Jun 16, 2005 20:40:22 GMT
Just playing devil's advocate as a newbie here. If for the moment we put the question of copyright infringement on the back burner, ....and that is a very important issue you are putting on the backburner there ! Copyright is not just a technicality, it is the insurance that those involved in making the original programme for our enjoyment and pleasure get the payment due to them, I disagree, if the material exists, then it is just the effort in ensuring that the relevant archives/copyright owners are made aware of this fact. If emails go un-answered etc, then it should be the purpose of this forum to use it's insider contacts to highlight where certain material exists. Not sure how swapping maintains the preservation of original material, not who has 10th generation copies of items. This is the crunch, how could this ever be achieved ? (and why should it ?) No profit driven corporation will ever let its product be traded for free. If I had spent considerable costs creating something in the first place, why would I ever want to give it away for free ? Especially as the interest in the product proves that there is a viable market out there ? Agreed, but anonymity in this respect equals illegality. Personally I would prefer to push the BBC, or one of its distribution arms to release a product in the small quantities that collectors require. Ensuring peace of mind that both the item is properly preserved and that those interested in it have access to it. I am not criticizing all your obvious good intents, I am just trying to suggest how how we should tackle the distribution of 'found' archive material in a way that is both legal and benefits both parties. |
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Post by markoates on Jun 17, 2005 0:13:46 GMT
Who the hell said it was?? I was just setting the topic aside to address the technicalities of a method of retrieving "lost" programming, which I was under the impression was the suggestion of the original poster.
Pay attention at the back! Who said anything about 10th generation copies? The idea was to set up some kind of forum to enable the exchange of (at worst) second generation digital transfers of missing material, not some car-boot sale for bootlegs of old Doctor Who episodes or rips of commercially available DVDs.
How? The BBC currently has an amnesty for people who have (ultimately illegally) obtained discarded copyright material. Why? This forum is all about recovering missing episodes of television discarded by short-sighted company policies. If there are "lost" programmes out there in private hands, there needs to be some effort to encourage the material to be returned, if not in its original form then at least as viewable content.
No profit-driven corporation (and why does the BBC have to be profit-driven??) would have to let its product be traded for free if it had kept the stuff in the first place. And if there is a viable market out there for its product, why did BBC bean-counters pull the plug on the release of the Adam Adamant Lives box set earlier in the year? Because it wouldn't be financially viable.
Me too, and that idea's fine for the materials the BBC has in its possession - but we were discussing a system for ultimately re-acquiring materials it currently hasn't got, or at least making rare tv materials less vulnerable by ensuring backups through possibly the licensed trading of collectors.
I was deliberately not arguing copyright semantics because IP rights would ultimately scupper any such file-sharing idea.
Let's face it, though. The BBC and ITV have happily sat on their archives for fifty and more years and will continue to do so, as I am sure both organisations regard the market for archive television at best a niche one. We'll continue to get releases like Dr Who and Dad's Army, we'll even see more esoteric stuff thanks to outfits like Network and DDHE, as long as the market lives up to the bean-counters expectations. I just don't see a limited-run duplication service for collectors appealing to them. Not unless they charge extortionate rates for the privilege.
The alternative is the BBC's online content initiative, which is a laudable idea but is compromised by a need to keep bandwidth (and therefore quality) down. And then of course there will be the inevitable question of security, IP rights and revenue stream protection that will have to be thrashed out endlessly.
When that comes about, we'll all be flying jet-propelled pigs.
EDIT: For what it's worth, I'm dead set against BitTorrent because the people who've used the system for bootlegging tv and movies have only managed to get the producers of content worked up about the loss of phantom revenue. As is par for the course, the entertainments industry is a couple of dozen paces behind developments in technology and rather than filling the gaps in the market that the pirates are exploiting, they try to use the law to get the genie back in the bottle. If they'd try to cooperate with consumers rather than trying to dictate terms, maybe consumers would cooperate with them. You treat somebody like a criminal maybe they start to act like one.
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Post by Martin Bryce on Jun 17, 2005 12:16:31 GMT
I agree with a lot of what you say there, but I am not a self rightcious b*****d, just trying to understand what the proper and legal way would be to go about this.
We are at the same stage with illegal downloads of TV programmes as we were 5 years ago with Napster and so the natural way forward, I would guess, would be some subscription downloading service instigated by the BBC or whoever. Similar to what they do with the BBC radio 'listen again'.
My problem relates to your last point, I actually do not want to behave like a criminal, but on a positive note I would suspect that the current acceptance of illegal downloadings will result in TV companies having to take action and provide some proper and legal method to open up their archives rather then let the pirates take away potential revenue from them. So in one way, this can only be a good thing.
I would also like to know whatever happened to the BBC's plan to start opening up its archive to the general public ? Was this just a feel-good message from our public service broadcaster or is any plan under way ? The internet is the perfect vehicle for this.
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Post by markoates on Jun 17, 2005 14:39:30 GMT
Martin, my apologies if you thought I meant you were a self-righteous etc. etc. I merely meant there are a lot of them out there, and I posted the comment in a different thread to avoid the connotation with yourself. I desperately want a proper and legal method of getting archive material to a wider audience. I also want to see material that is currently in private hands safely preserved for, and available to, future generations. At the moment, unfortunately, any such scheme tends to be rejected out of hand by content owners over issues of duplication security, revenue protection and IP rights protection (and that includes rights clearance - which as Gareth R pointed out in the other thread tends to be the deal-breaker on commercial exploitation of archive material). Actually I think we're at the same position with video downloads this year as the music downloads were about eighteen months ago. Hollywood, backed by the US government, is about to make an extremely hostile takeover of the whole P2P infrastructure. All the Torrent sites will, if they haven't already, disappear and reappear as wholly owned subsidiaries of the Hollywood Studios. Fair enough. I have mixed feelings about the whole Robin Hood attitude to IP rights on the web anyway. What concerns me is what we'll get out of it as consumers. How much will a movie cost to download? Will some fiendish DRM system delete the file or make it unplayable at the whim of the distributors? Would I be able to legally retain a hard (DVD) copy of a movie/ programme I was particularly fond of, or would I have to pay £2.99 every time I wanted to even see a clip of it? Would the Hollywood Studio servers carry archive stuff at all, or would they (more likely) carry bandwidth maximising multiple file copies of modern programming/ films? Electronic storage (and transfer to that storage) costs money, and no matter how cheap you might think it might be, added up across thousands of tv shows and old movies that very few people might care about, it might not be economically attractive to content owners to pander to weirdoes like us. I mean, it's not that long ago BBC staff used to call Dr Who and Blake's 7 fans "barkers"; and BBC1 has yet to repeat a single episode of Dr Who in primetime. If somebody could come up with a plan that could keep content IP owners and consumers happy, and make rare archive material readily and affordably available to you and me, I'd sign up to it immediately. I would observe again that the original topic of this thread was the feasibility of setting up some private forum for collectors that would facilitate the recovery of missing tv archive material via a licensed exchange programme - if content owners turned a blind eye to the trade, they might get stuff back they wouldn't otherwise. Are we all friends now?  |
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Post by Gareth R on Jun 17, 2005 20:01:54 GMT
There was a great deal of misreporting about this. The actual plan was (and presumably still is) to make clips from certain elements of the archive downloadable, with the emphasis on material that could be used for educational purposes (e.g. downloading clips from Walking With Dinosaurs to incorporate into school projects).
Unfortunately, the way it was misreported (including, ironically enough, by BBC Online) led a lot of people who hadn't actually read the text of Dyke's speech to believe it meant they'd be able to download complete episodes of any BBC programme they wanted.
And very bloody sensible, too. They've achieved what was once thought impossible by making DW cool again; it makes no sense to shoot themselves in the foot now by showing repeats that remind everyone of what a cheap, dated, frequently-badly-acted programme it used to be.
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Post by markoates on Jun 17, 2005 20:55:26 GMT
My point being that there is real reluctance for the BBC to re-screen material older than six months (unless it stars Felicity Kendal), so I would suspect a VOD service would follow the same model and you'd have no problem downloading last week's Eastenders episode but no chance whatsoever of getting a look at (f'rinstance) Adam Adamant Lives.
I think it's a shame the BBC has forsaken public-service broadcasting in the name of chasing ratings and trying to turn a profit (we all know whose fault that is). BBC4 has occasionally offered a glimpse of what a proper archive channel could be (at least when pseud producers haven't been chasing their own "no such thing as a golden age" agenda). Otherwise, the only "classic" tv we're exposed to these days (other than DVD releases) usually includes an intrusive UKGold DOG in the top corner.
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Post by pete seaton on Jun 17, 2005 23:49:11 GMT
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Post by Simon Winchester on Jun 18, 2005 0:06:30 GMT
"It makes no sense to shoot themselves in the foot now by showing repeats that remind everyone of what a cheap, dated, frequently-badly-acted programme it used to be."
Mr Randall, how dare you deride Dr. Who. I for one having enjoyed the lastest series am looking forward to the public acclamation of the next DVD release. I speak of 'The Web Planet' which despite all odds magages to create an alien world a million light years away from those we see with today's cgi. I personally prefer this simplistic world of make believe and gentle pleasures.
The acting abilities of the main cast are in sterling array here. The photography is first rate and conveys somethig to those who believe. It could easily be repeated on BBC1 as a follow-up to the new series and I predict that this exciting release is an excellent choice to introduce new viewers to the wonder of the past.
You, on the other hand strike like the venom grub.
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Post by John G on Jun 18, 2005 10:48:45 GMT
Gareth R has a very valid point.May be now is the time to be mature about this and accept that these programmes were not lost accidentally,but deliberately, when someone in the BBC reviewed these programmes years later and said "Gee ! Gods! this is bloody awful"
and promptly sent the tape to Thats Life to be used to record singing milkmen or Cyril Fletcher oderising in the studio.
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