Canada spent years digitizing classic TV and published the shows on a Youtube channel, then suddenly deleted all the content without notice to archivers, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35716982.
In the absence of social contracts for preservation, we are left with defensive archiving.
There's a Quebec kid tv show "Une grenade avec ca" I really liked when I was a teenager and at some point one of the main actors got prosecuted for possession of child pornography, so they pulled out all the episodes he played in... which is basically every single episode I ever watched.
I understand their decision to not air those, but it still feels like a part of my childhood got erased and I wish I could get a copy of those episodes.
Maybe you don't value history, but many people do. The point isn't entertainment, or the kind of entertainment you're imagining. Of course this won't compete on the streaming market. The point is that it is a time capsule of an age we've already forgotten.
Because you (making the decision) do not speak for the generations that will follow. In making that decision you are (arrogantly) assuming that you know the minds of all those that will follow and that they will agree with your assessment that "there's nothing to see here".
Perhaps you meant in the sense of a deliberate memory hole (in the Orwellian sense), in other words eliminating that which you don't want others to discover.
> These collectors were seen as criminals, but now we can see they are really saviours. An amnesty would stop them being frightened of prosecution,” he said.
He should give the tapes to the British museum out of spite. They BBC will never get the back and the British Museum doesn't care what crimes were committed as long as their collection grows.
Most countries have statues of limitations for criminal offenses.
It makes sense - imagine trying to defend yourself against an case where the police has been sitting on evidence for 50 years, and anyone you could call in your defense is long-dead.
Sadly this article is misleading - John Franklin has issued a statement saying that he was misquoted [1] and there is actually an amnesty when handing over missing episodes.
As others have said this article is poorly written with the person interviewed saying he was misquoted so nothing in it can be taken as true.
However, there have been very strong rumors for years that 2-3 episodes known to be in the hands of collectors (I believe it was said in a recorded interview with the Radio Free Skaro podcast by someone involved in Classic Who bluray releases)
While some people may be worried about legal implications I suspect that most just would rather keep it. If they really wanted to return it they could hand it off to someone who would be an intermediary. So the real danger is that once they die, whoever inherits their collection may not care about it and junk the whole thing.
That makes more sense to me knowing how this happens in the arcade preservation community. Some people really get off on having 'the only copy' of something.
Listening to the latest episode of Radio Free Skaro they confirm that the rumors were stated on their show and read a quote from the person interviewed for this article who says they were just repeating what they heard of Radio Free Skaro!
The easiest solution would be to send them anonymously to a third party abroad, who'd then proceed to digitise the tapes, returning the originals to the collectors, and hand the resulting files to the BBC. Setting up a trustable network of anonymous relays crossing jurisdictions for physical goods is the hard part, and tends to attract the wrong kind of attention to the ones involved.
Before the footage is made available, the people holding that footage have leverage.
Once they share it somehow, the leverage is gone and it's unlikely that they'd be given amnesty. In fact, the act of sharing the footage has some nonzero chance of revealing people . . .
They wouldn’t need amnesty if they can never be identified. Also, they could return the BBCs property anonymously and release the digitised versions after that.
I didn't know anything about this; it's quite interesting.
...the infamous arrest of comedian Bob Monkhouse in 1978 has not been forgotten, Franklin suspects: “Monkhouse was a private collector and was accused of pirating videos. He even had some of his archive seized. Sadly people still believe they could have their films confiscated.”
Seems like an article that would have been vastly improved if they had simply put the question about an amnesty directly to the BBC and printed their response.
They did. The BBC carefully avoided saying anything meaningful.
> The BBC said it was ready to talk to anyone with lost episodes. “We welcome members of the public contacting us regarding programmes they believe are lost archive recordings, and are happy to work with them to restore lost or missing programmes to the BBC archives,” it said.
> They did. The BBC carefully avoided saying anything meaningful.
I think it can be interpreted a little more charitably than that:
> We welcome members of the public contacting us regarding programmes they believe are lost archive recordings
They're literally feeding lines to potential respondents, to help them avoid implicating themselves in theft. You didn't take reels from the studio, you found "lost recordings" they were looking for.
> and are happy to work with them to restore lost or missing programmes to the BBC archives
They're doing it again here. It's not "returning shit you stole," it's "restoring lost or missing programmes." Return it as lost and stick to your story.
FWIW, here in the US "we will work with you" is the exact same verbiage we use in calls to recover lost equipment we actually need but retain discretion in litigation over.
We don't commit to promises of amnesty because sometimes it turns out you've been dumping brand-new equipment off the loading dock and selling it on eBay for years, and that's not worth looking past just for the return of one item.
But if you happen to have the one thing we're looking for and weren't misappropriating millions of dollars in assets in addition to the lost item, we just want it back and won't ask questions.
Readit News
Canada spent years digitizing classic TV and published the shows on a Youtube channel, then suddenly deleted all the content without notice to archivers, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35716982.
In the absence of social contracts for preservation, we are left with defensive archiving.
I understand their decision to not air those, but it still feels like a part of my childhood got erased and I wish I could get a copy of those episodes.
Dead Comment
Perhaps you meant in the sense of a deliberate memory hole (in the Orwellian sense), in other words eliminating that which you don't want others to discover.
The UK is unusual in that it has no statute of limitations for most crimes besides "summary offenses" (equivalent to US misdemeanors): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limitation_periods_in_the_Unit...
Dead Comment
It makes sense - imagine trying to defend yourself against an case where the police has been sitting on evidence for 50 years, and anyone you could call in your defense is long-dead.
[1] https://twitter.com/drwhopodcasters/status/17233881608669433...
https://archive.org/details/doctorwho_s01
https://archive.org/details/doctorwho_s02
https://archive.org/details/doctorwho_s03_v2
https://archive.org/details/doctorwho_s04
https://archive.org/details/doctorwho_s05
https://archive.org/details/doctorwho_s06
https://archive.org/details/doctorwho_s07
https://archive.org/details/doctorwho_s08
However, there have been very strong rumors for years that 2-3 episodes known to be in the hands of collectors (I believe it was said in a recorded interview with the Radio Free Skaro podcast by someone involved in Classic Who bluray releases)
While some people may be worried about legal implications I suspect that most just would rather keep it. If they really wanted to return it they could hand it off to someone who would be an intermediary. So the real danger is that once they die, whoever inherits their collection may not care about it and junk the whole thing.
I’m not finding this claim being made elsewhere in the comments here. Do you have a link?
I could't care less about restoring BBC history if BBC themselves don't care enough to lay down a legal way for this to happen without my help.
That doesn't meet the goal of amnesty.
Before the footage is made available, the people holding that footage have leverage.
Once they share it somehow, the leverage is gone and it's unlikely that they'd be given amnesty. In fact, the act of sharing the footage has some nonzero chance of revealing people . . .
Deleted Comment
Deleted Comment
...the infamous arrest of comedian Bob Monkhouse in 1978 has not been forgotten, Franklin suspects: “Monkhouse was a private collector and was accused of pirating videos. He even had some of his archive seized. Sadly people still believe they could have their films confiscated.”
https://www.pressreader.com/uk/daily-mail/20180824/282703342...
> The BBC said it was ready to talk to anyone with lost episodes. “We welcome members of the public contacting us regarding programmes they believe are lost archive recordings, and are happy to work with them to restore lost or missing programmes to the BBC archives,” it said.
I think it can be interpreted a little more charitably than that:
> We welcome members of the public contacting us regarding programmes they believe are lost archive recordings
They're literally feeding lines to potential respondents, to help them avoid implicating themselves in theft. You didn't take reels from the studio, you found "lost recordings" they were looking for.
> and are happy to work with them to restore lost or missing programmes to the BBC archives
They're doing it again here. It's not "returning shit you stole," it's "restoring lost or missing programmes." Return it as lost and stick to your story.
FWIW, here in the US "we will work with you" is the exact same verbiage we use in calls to recover lost equipment we actually need but retain discretion in litigation over.
We don't commit to promises of amnesty because sometimes it turns out you've been dumping brand-new equipment off the loading dock and selling it on eBay for years, and that's not worth looking past just for the return of one item.
But if you happen to have the one thing we're looking for and weren't misappropriating millions of dollars in assets in addition to the lost item, we just want it back and won't ask questions.