Arr … chivin’.
I’m going to steal this.
I’m going to arr…chive that
Typical.
Maybe even go as far to distribute it further to the masses for free??
Unbelievable!!!
And to what end, at what cost? A slightly better (or at least not actively worse) society? Why won’t anyone prioritise the illogically excessive needs of the few over those of many??
Hey, I like the sound of that.

An archaeologist is just a thief with patience
-River Song
I love being the only seeder for something only for the fact I can share it. The problem is, more people should be seeding it as well to preserve history.
Heres my favorite contraband:
Most here are just talking about one form of media, why not include video games like “Black and White” made by Lion Head Studios and not sold anywhere, but can only be found on archive sites for dead games. Edit: if you want to find these abandon games the site that I use is My Abandonware
Or the absolutely legendary “No one lives Forever” that is stuck in a Limbo of Legality - iirc it’s not clear who has the rights to distribute the game, so it isn’t.
One of my all time faves.
I do think I’m going to start a retro game ROM collection in general. I have a sizable physical collection already, but there are just so many that aren’t easily available anymore.
For the early consoles you can torrent rom packs containing everything released for the platform. It’s not a big download until you start getting to the N64/PSX timeframe.
Abandonment collector since 2000 here…
It is still piracy
At the end of the day piracy is a personal choice
IT BELONGS
IN A MUSEUMON MY HARDRIVEIn a way a lot of us end up becoming amateur librarians. When the big megaservers get hit with something nasty, or they decide to purge it all for AI datasets or something. (Idk it’s a stupid timeline anything is possible lol)
I like to think our fellow amateur archivists who started collecting such things for personal reasons will be a force for preserving meaningful artifacts of human experience.
I was thinking Internet Archive, but either works.
SO DO YOU!
Throw him over the side.
“.……no ticket!”
“(smirk) Fortune and glory, kid. Fortune and glory.”
Also, ripping your local libraries dvd collection for personal use is called archiving and depending where you live completely legal.
Yeah that “depending” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there lol.
Also big depending: At least try not to make it TOO obvious that’s what you’re doing. Most library people are cool, (Source: know library people) but it’s kinda obvious when we see someone racking up the hold shelf with like 30-40 DVDs and CDs a week. LMAO
Unfortunately the mega media interests do occasionally try to pressure libraries to enforce copyright violations or whatever. (Like telling you you can’t photocopy textbook pages or something)
I personally try to just archive things I own, primarily, or things that are special and important to me, but that’s also because I have maybe 4TB to work with and hardware is insane again.
But there’s a point when it starts to look like compulsory hoarding lol. It’s kinda an open secret/ gray area, and a few people being stupid will likely catch attention. (Look what happened to archive.org fending off broadsides from the publishing industry.)
I know its not everywhere but where i live its 100% legal and protected under fair use as long as i don’t distribute outside my household.
Where I live the library card costs 5-10 € per year and they carry blu rays, video games and e books. Needless to say I’ve now renewed this card for the 15th year in a row
Yeah I “archived” all my “dvds”
“my”
I mean, I paid to access them through Netflix, back when Netflix still sent DVDs through the mail. They were “mine” for the moment.
“Ours”, comrade.
Oh shit forgot about the library. Definitely going check out some movies.
I finally got around to hosting a JellyFinn server and there’s a number of useful programs you can use to get your movies off DVD and Blu ray. MakeMKV and HandBrake my beloved programs
Automatic ripping machine has also made things so much easier on my end.
I’ve been using Handbrake to rip DVDs but haven’t started using MakeMKV yet. I do have a number of blu-rays that Handbrake can’t seem to process on its own.
I can vouch for MakeMKV as well.
I had so much frustration trying to rip Blu-Rays other ways. Did the free trial and got my whole library ripped pretty cleanly and easily. Eventually decided to buy the software so I wouldn’t have to keep looking up and entering the trial key. There’s not much higher of a commendation I can give than to say that I decided to give them $60 I didn’t have to because it was good.
What are some examples of some TV shows that you can no longer stream or buy?
The first that came to mind are episodes that have been removed from circulation, like the Pokemon episode with Porygon, or the It’s Always Sunny Lethal Weapon episodes, or that first DnD episode from Community.
From a quick search, there are a bunch that are stuck in weird legal limbo: The Drew Carey Show, Dogma, Tales from the Crypt.
Someone also mentioned Song of the South being pulled by Disney. Ooh, or the original Star Wars films from before they were edited. There are also probably a ton of not well known older films that would benefit from being preserved.
I tried to find the show @midnight for a long time, and comedy central would have a rotating section of episodes, but never the whole series…it was my white whale for a while
If you know how to use BitTorrent, the entire show is out there for grabs!
I had every single episode a few years ago, took me ages to track them all down. Then I lost them all during a storage upgrade… But when the new After Midnight show started up, some kind soul uploaded a torrent of the entire @midnight archive.👍
Yeap! Noticed I said “was” ;-) I manged to find the whole thing, have it backed up on multiple drives, and try to seed as much as possible. Side note, After Midnight is no where near as good of a show, sadly.
Agreed… it took me a while to warm up to new new show while they figured out what they were doing. After a few months I began to enjoy it for what it was… It could never touch the original, but it had some of that same spirit of ridiculousness. The 2nd season was better, but that’s all we got. Hardwick seriously needs to start up @m again!
Song of the South. Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, Brer Bear, etc.
A Disney movie that Disney doesn’t want anyone to remember because of the inherent racism. Using stories that originated during slavery, but setting the movie after the war to try to take the curse off.
It’s damn near impossible to get in the U.S., but easy to access via the high seas, and Disney uncharacteristically won’t go after you for it, because they don’t want to draw attention to it.
It incorporated some innovative techniques for blending live action with animation and has some value in terms of history of cinema. I don’t think it should disappear completely, but I do think it’s important to view it critically.
Personally, I found that apart from the racism, a lot of the writing and acting in the live action sequences was so absolutely terrible it was painful to watch.
Currently digging up and preserving an old French movie for future generations. It’s slow-going ATM, but I’m making steady progress.
o7









