Is piracy ACTUALLY the best solution for film preservation?

Warner Bros. Discovery are killing animation. Can piracy save it?

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HBO Max is Removing Some of Its Best Animated Shows and Fans Aren't Okay
So uh... what's going on with Infinity Train?
Tweet thread about access vs preservation by mrbnatural10

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[BlueDavrial]

The reason piracy is said to be key to preservation is because as long as corporations are the only ones who can access a property, there is no guarantee that it will stay preserved. By making these inaccessible properties accessable via piracy, you can guarantee it's preservation in multiple ways. It's more likely to be preserved via quantity of existing copies, but also that makes it so more devoted preservationists have access to the property to the purposefully preserve it.
TLDR: Piracy itself is not preservation, but it makes preservation *immensely* easier.

[lavender_evie]

As an australian who likes watching cartoons piracy is sometimes the only answer to seeing some cartoons within a year of it coming out. Distribution between english speaking countries is not equal and not every country gets every streaming service at the same time. It is absolutely wild that animation is not being taken seriously enough at this point. I wish there were more legal ways to watch things when they come out

[gota]

Being in a few animated series fandoms, I was always curious about why creators and crew members where so relaxed about the very obvious piracy throughout their fandoms. In part I wondered if we'd just arrived at the limewire and onwards generation, however it explained a lot when people came out and admitted that they where relying on fan uploads to get digital copies of their finalised work because the studios didn't provide them.

[sacha]

I think piracy is completely okay when big corporations make their media inaccessible. Art is made to be consumed. It would be very disrespectful to the artists if we accept these works fading into oblivion.

[graymorality]

I disagree with one point a bit, I think if art is not being viewed, it is not being preserved in the idea of the intent of the work being part of the work. So Accessibility of art is part of preserving it. In addition, having it in multiple places helps keep these things around.

[Megalo]

Betty Ross didn't save the American flag from burning to preserve just for no one to be able to see it, and the Batgirl directors weren't trying to salvage rough footage from warner brothers servers just to keep it to themselves. (They weren't able to, but they wanted to someday release the footage if they saved anything) Preservation and accessibility may be two different things but there is no point in preservation if it remains inaccessible.

[Robin_Glader]

I think the answer to the question is yes. If preserving art just meant locking it away in vault that's better than nothing but if it's not released within our lifetimes that doesn't matter all that much to us who are alive today. Art is made to be viewed not locked away.

[TheAIKnowledgeHub]

I've been pirating things in the past few months because it is just a freaking nightmare with the price changes, companies going to ad base model, and how a number of streaming services only has ONE show going on now that I want to watch and many time it is even good enough to buy.
Funny thing for those looking at the legal. As far as I know, in the USA it isn't illegal to stream or download pirate content. It is however illegal to upload and give away the content. It makes sense because if you go to random site, don't know better, and you could easily accidentally consumer pirated content.

[sushicat]

As someone from south america, piracy is the only option here, for pretty much anything. Thing are simply not available or too expensive for the average person. I couldn't have developed my loved for cinema if it wasn't for piracy, practically every movie that is not a blockbuster or older than 50 years is pretty much unobtainable otherwise

[MatSjo]

Although I stopped pirating movies etc over 10 years ago at this point. But I can’t deny the fact that when it comes to more obscure titles, piracy might actually be the solution since the fans are more likely to preserve things than the studios who prioritise the monetary gain.

[LB]

17:07 As a big physical media collector myself, who loves watching old films and TV shows in high quality. This happens a lot more often then it should. Thank goodness all 4Ks and most Blu-rays are reagion free.

[DreazyBK]

The idea of not condoning piracy is so nuts to me. Like, imagine respecting the ip rights of giant corporations. Insanity

[absoul]

I’m not sure how I feel about the pedantry of “preservation “ vs “accessibility “. Films locked in the copyright office are “preserved “ but it’s in a way that doesn’t mean much unless someone makes a copy from it and releases it.

I wonder how different this conversation would be if it were about video games.

[timothymclean]

No single solution will ever preserve media indefinitely. All we can do is maintain what solutions we can and hope the Powers That Be do their part.

[jackmackakaheavyguyhaiku]

Hey Scott, I think that preservation and paying artists of all stripes is important. However, in lieu of the proper access to the art, should we be denied the access that we can get ahold of? A great example that applies to me: Nightmare Café. Yes, it's aired in syndication in the past. But there's never been a home media release in ANY format. Important because it's Wes Craven and Robert Englund working together on a NON-Freddy Kruger project. Yes all 6 episodes are on YouTube, seemingly copies from their original 1992 airings. But they're clearly degrading in quality. Someday there will be no decent access to it without proper release.
In conclusion, is preserving art important? Obviously yes. But is access also important? Absolutely. So piracy, while not helping the artists bottom line or helping preserve great video quality, does do a service to the fans. And it does help to some extent preserve the legacy of the artists. Plus, if it's unavailable by "legal" means, piracy doesn't hurt artists' bottom line because they won't get paid even if the pirated copies don't exist.

[Minihood]

I am unsure how I feel about things being locked in the library of Congress being considered "preserved".

Because... If it's locked in there forever and no one gets to view it, it is functionally no different to if it was literally burned to ash.

If nobody ever gets to see it, for whom is it being preserved?
If the answer is nobody, then it's not preserved.
Preserved is a property that can only be applied retroactively, once someone has viewed the preserved object.

Maybe it's open to research applications from universities or something. Then perhaps it feels more like preservation.

But if they just lock it up and throw away the key, to me it's functionally identical to destruction.

[N-MCMXCIX]

Unless legal issues outright prevent them from doing so, why not put said old Marvel cartoons on Disney+? They have a "Star Wars Vintage" collection for non-canon Star Wars stuff not old enough to be vintage, why not do the same for Marvel? In fact, why stop at animation? There were some low-budget live-action productions from back in the day that can also arrive. Anything not Hulk they can do. So why not? Disney+ should be home to the popular and the obscure alike.

[Von_D]

The highest quality audio of Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z's Japanese audio is only preserved and accessible via piracy because Toei Animation not only destroyed the audio masters but also refused to take up offers of the fans who managed to capture the original broadcasts — the only ones to contain clean non-deteriorated audio.

[sdani]

The "Piracy is stealing" line has always been funny to me. Not only is it factually incorrect, but "Piracy is Counterfeiting" or "Piracy is Forgery" both sounds more illegal and makes pirates seem more likely to get caught. Everyone has gotten away with or knows someone who got away with stealing something when they were a kid, be it a bit of candy from a friend's halloween basket or whatever, but counterfeiting and forgery is big time adult crime. It's almost as if the people making anti-piracy ad campaigns actively tried to sabotage themselves.

[gstack]

uncle grandpa survived the purge. Initially for a few hours one episode survived and then afterwords it was purged. Now uncle grandpa is only in one episode of steven universe