whats funny is that other than greedo shooting first the rest of the changes weren't really that offensive. But its been a while so maybe I blocked some really bad ones from memory
Technically it is since abandonware has no legal meaning, at least in the US. Nobody can argue this example of copyright infringement isn't a moral good unless they are just arguing from a "you must always follow the law" perspective.
As Ross Scott says, there are no good reasons, only legal ones.
Not just you, but everyone in this comment thread, a reminder:
Hard drives wear out. There is no real effective way to guarantee all the data in them can be safeguarded before it is lost, and critically failing entirely occurs alongside just corrupted data issues. Have redundancies. Test your files where possible.
Honestly, it's hard. There's the obvious, agonizing option of hand-testing files (not all of them, but test a sample of 30-ish of them, ideally not the same ones as a prior test). And... That's really it. That's your option.
It's hard for computers to know when a file is corrupted, except by running the file. And even then, sometimes it won't notice. It's like living in a house with rotted wood in the wall, until it collapses, you won't know unless you by-hand check it.
You could do things like listen to how the server runs, try to hear if any sounds seem off, but every drive sounds ever so different anyways, unless it's REALLY off you won't be able to tell. Best bet is just to sample random files and see if they're intact.
Physical damage is obviously noticeable, of course. Water damage, impact damage, those are bad. And if possible, a temperature check is useful, is it running hotter than it should be? Could be a sign of wear on the internal components, thermal paste erosion (hopefully just that since it's an easy fix), or power source issues.
I'm in the process of consolidating a decade of torrenting from a half dozen 1-4 tb drives in USB caddys to a pair of 16tb drives - no raiding yet but as long as the torrents have at least one seed I can recover from a drive failure
This "updated for modern audiences" is one of the worst kinds of censorship to me. I think it's worse to revise something to present a falsified view of the past than it is to ban it outright. Even if there was something so bad that 100% of people today were to find it grossly offensive, it needs to remain as-is for the sake of preservation of history.
Just shitpost them by talking about/doing what is removed and then when they complain point out what they are complaining about doesn't exist any more because they fucking revised it!
Entire article doesn't display on the archive site, full text below
Reflecting upon George Orwell’s many authoritative predictions can grow tiresome for writer and reader alike. And yet, given our present predicament, one might ask what choice one truly has. “The sinister fact about literary censorship in England,” Orwell wrote back in 1945, “is that it is largely voluntary.” And so, indeed, it is. Over the weekend, the Daily Telegraph reported that “an anonymous Radio 4 Extra listener” had “discovered the BBC had been quietly editing repeats of shows over the past few years to be more in keeping with social mores.” To which the BBC said . . . well, yeah. In a statement addressing the charge, the institution confirmed that “on occasion we edit some episodes so they’re suitable for broadcast today, including removing racially offensive language and stereotypes from decades ago, as the vast majority of our audience would expect.” Thus, in the absence of law or regulation, has the British establishment begun to excise material it finds inappropriate by today’s lights.
The deployment of the word “broadcast” in the BBC’s affirmation was both deliberate and misleading. Historically, a “broadcast” was a one-off event, like a newspaper or stage performance. But, as the BBC presumably knows, in the age of streaming, “broadcasts” tend to be more permanent than that. Because it is so old, much of the material that the BBC has been altering is not available to purchase or download, nor broadly owned on physical media, which means that when the BBC elects to change it, it is changing the only working copy that the majority of the public may enjoy. In a free market, one might be obliged to throw up one’s hands and lament that the copyright holder was such a philistine. But the BBC is a de facto government agency — an agency for which all Britons who own televisions are forced by statute to pay — and, as a result, the material that it is modifying is effectively publicly owned.
This raises a host of important questions — chief among which is: Why, if “the vast majority” of the BBC’s audience expects the organization to render its archives more “suitable,” has it been doing so in secret? Again: In the Internet age, changes made to source material tend to be iterative rather than additive. When the New York Times updates a story in its newspaper, one can plausibly obtain both copies. By contrast, when the New York Times updates a story on its website, the original page disappears. By its own admission, the BBC has been deleting entire sketches from comedy series that are 50, 60, or 70 years old, many of which can be heard only with the BBC’s permission. Are we simply to assume that the public supports this development? And, if so, are we permitted to wonder why the BBC was not open about it?
Orwell based the job that Winston Smith held in the Records section of the Ministry of Truth on the job that his wife, Eileen O’Shaughnessy, had held at the British Ministry of Information’s censorship department early in World War II. The “process of continuous alteration” in which Smith was engaged, Orwell wrote in 1984, “applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs—to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance,” such that “day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date.” What better description could one find of what the BBC is now doing to its canon? Some of the revisions — the removal of “racist and misogynistic jokes used in several of its classic radio comedies” — are, indeed, the result of changing mores. Others, however, smack of cynical self-protection. Per the Telegraph, the BBC has “purged mentions of disgraced stars Jimmy Savile and Rolf Harris” from its collections. And down the memory hole goes that.
One might reasonably wonder where such a project might end. Whether one likes it or not, Jimmy Savile and Rolf Harris existed. They were real people, who had a real effect on the culture, and who appeared on a vast number of real radio and television shows that were produced and disseminated by the BBC. That they turned out to be extremely bad people is regrettable, but it does not alter material reality. Thanks to its traditional role and its remarkable longevity, the BBC is in the enviable position of having untrammeled access to a treasure trove of historical archives. If, in an attempt to protect its reputation and placate Britain’s many would-be arbiters of taste, it is incapable of curating and exhibiting those archives without attempting to bringing them “up to date,” then, as a matter of priority, they must be placed elsewhere — alongside an exacting and stringent warning that, whatever the role of government-run media may be in 2022, it cannot be to control the past, the present, or anything in-between.
I remember saying once to Arthur Koestler, ‘History stopped in 1936’, at which he nodded in immediate understanding. We were both thinking of totalitarianism in general, but more particularly of the Spanish civil war. Early in life I have noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various ‘party lines’.
The BBC license fee was recently frozen from price increases for 2 years. They claimed it would kill their ability to make good programming and would have to make $3 Billion in budget cuts.
I see they got it backwards. They're killing $3 billion by making cuts to good programming.
Sort of related but yesterday I was flipping channels and I watched a few minutes of a Happy Days episode. They were in the main kid's room and I noticed that one of the posters on the wall was blurred out. It was a red poster with black lettering but that's all I could see. I'm trying to imagine what it said that led to them blurring it out.
we are to the point where torrents and piracy in general went from being a slightly transgressive convenience to a desirable moral good
the enemies of humanity and western civilization can't use censorship to forward their agendas if they aren't in control over the data
Ridiculous but intriguing take.
whats funny is that other than greedo shooting first the rest of the changes weren't really that offensive. But its been a while so maybe I blocked some really bad ones from memory
ok you are right, I guess I did block those out
It's common for people to block out traumatic events in their lives.
Not to that one guy here who's against piracy lol
Is it even piracy at this point? They purposefully took that version off the market, shouldn't the old version be made available as abandonware?
Technically it is since abandonware has no legal meaning, at least in the US. Nobody can argue this example of copyright infringement isn't a moral good unless they are just arguing from a "you must always follow the law" perspective.
As Ross Scott says, there are no good reasons, only legal ones.
Not just you, but everyone in this comment thread, a reminder:
Hard drives wear out. There is no real effective way to guarantee all the data in them can be safeguarded before it is lost, and critically failing entirely occurs alongside just corrupted data issues. Have redundancies. Test your files where possible.
Honestly, it's hard. There's the obvious, agonizing option of hand-testing files (not all of them, but test a sample of 30-ish of them, ideally not the same ones as a prior test). And... That's really it. That's your option.
It's hard for computers to know when a file is corrupted, except by running the file. And even then, sometimes it won't notice. It's like living in a house with rotted wood in the wall, until it collapses, you won't know unless you by-hand check it.
You could do things like listen to how the server runs, try to hear if any sounds seem off, but every drive sounds ever so different anyways, unless it's REALLY off you won't be able to tell. Best bet is just to sample random files and see if they're intact.
Physical damage is obviously noticeable, of course. Water damage, impact damage, those are bad. And if possible, a temperature check is useful, is it running hotter than it should be? Could be a sign of wear on the internal components, thermal paste erosion (hopefully just that since it's an easy fix), or power source issues.
I'm in the process of consolidating a decade of torrenting from a half dozen 1-4 tb drives in USB caddys to a pair of 16tb drives - no raiding yet but as long as the torrents have at least one seed I can recover from a drive failure
what usenet provider do you use?
Ty will look at it, torrents have been adequate so far and there is less suff worth downloading every yeat
Plex is amazing. It's worth the cost for a lifetime subscription.
This "updated for modern audiences" is one of the worst kinds of censorship to me. I think it's worse to revise something to present a falsified view of the past than it is to ban it outright. Even if there was something so bad that 100% of people today were to find it grossly offensive, it needs to remain as-is for the sake of preservation of history.
Just shitpost them by talking about/doing what is removed and then when they complain point out what they are complaining about doesn't exist any more because they fucking revised it!
Indeed. This happens in new publications of old books more than people know. and it isn't usually marked, from what I can tell.
Everything is lies. Everywhere. It's all designed to corrupt your ability to know what the truth is even when you see it with your own eyes.
Entire article doesn't display on the archive site, full text below
Reflecting upon George Orwell’s many authoritative predictions can grow tiresome for writer and reader alike. And yet, given our present predicament, one might ask what choice one truly has. “The sinister fact about literary censorship in England,” Orwell wrote back in 1945, “is that it is largely voluntary.” And so, indeed, it is. Over the weekend, the Daily Telegraph reported that “an anonymous Radio 4 Extra listener” had “discovered the BBC had been quietly editing repeats of shows over the past few years to be more in keeping with social mores.” To which the BBC said . . . well, yeah. In a statement addressing the charge, the institution confirmed that “on occasion we edit some episodes so they’re suitable for broadcast today, including removing racially offensive language and stereotypes from decades ago, as the vast majority of our audience would expect.” Thus, in the absence of law or regulation, has the British establishment begun to excise material it finds inappropriate by today’s lights.
The deployment of the word “broadcast” in the BBC’s affirmation was both deliberate and misleading. Historically, a “broadcast” was a one-off event, like a newspaper or stage performance. But, as the BBC presumably knows, in the age of streaming, “broadcasts” tend to be more permanent than that. Because it is so old, much of the material that the BBC has been altering is not available to purchase or download, nor broadly owned on physical media, which means that when the BBC elects to change it, it is changing the only working copy that the majority of the public may enjoy. In a free market, one might be obliged to throw up one’s hands and lament that the copyright holder was such a philistine. But the BBC is a de facto government agency — an agency for which all Britons who own televisions are forced by statute to pay — and, as a result, the material that it is modifying is effectively publicly owned.
This raises a host of important questions — chief among which is: Why, if “the vast majority” of the BBC’s audience expects the organization to render its archives more “suitable,” has it been doing so in secret? Again: In the Internet age, changes made to source material tend to be iterative rather than additive. When the New York Times updates a story in its newspaper, one can plausibly obtain both copies. By contrast, when the New York Times updates a story on its website, the original page disappears. By its own admission, the BBC has been deleting entire sketches from comedy series that are 50, 60, or 70 years old, many of which can be heard only with the BBC’s permission. Are we simply to assume that the public supports this development? And, if so, are we permitted to wonder why the BBC was not open about it?
Orwell based the job that Winston Smith held in the Records section of the Ministry of Truth on the job that his wife, Eileen O’Shaughnessy, had held at the British Ministry of Information’s censorship department early in World War II. The “process of continuous alteration” in which Smith was engaged, Orwell wrote in 1984, “applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs—to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance,” such that “day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date.” What better description could one find of what the BBC is now doing to its canon? Some of the revisions — the removal of “racist and misogynistic jokes used in several of its classic radio comedies” — are, indeed, the result of changing mores. Others, however, smack of cynical self-protection. Per the Telegraph, the BBC has “purged mentions of disgraced stars Jimmy Savile and Rolf Harris” from its collections. And down the memory hole goes that.
One might reasonably wonder where such a project might end. Whether one likes it or not, Jimmy Savile and Rolf Harris existed. They were real people, who had a real effect on the culture, and who appeared on a vast number of real radio and television shows that were produced and disseminated by the BBC. That they turned out to be extremely bad people is regrettable, but it does not alter material reality. Thanks to its traditional role and its remarkable longevity, the BBC is in the enviable position of having untrammeled access to a treasure trove of historical archives. If, in an attempt to protect its reputation and placate Britain’s many would-be arbiters of taste, it is incapable of curating and exhibiting those archives without attempting to bringing them “up to date,” then, as a matter of priority, they must be placed elsewhere — alongside an exacting and stringent warning that, whatever the role of government-run media may be in 2022, it cannot be to control the past, the present, or anything in-between.
Here's some more relevant Orwell:
-Looking back on the Spainish War
The BBC license fee was recently frozen from price increases for 2 years. They claimed it would kill their ability to make good programming and would have to make $3 Billion in budget cuts.
I see they got it backwards. They're killing $3 billion by making cuts to good programming.
Those who controlled in the past shape the future. And those who control the present are free to shape the past.
"Evil? Possibly. Effective? Certainly." -BBC's new motto, I'm sure.
Sort of related but yesterday I was flipping channels and I watched a few minutes of a Happy Days episode. They were in the main kid's room and I noticed that one of the posters on the wall was blurred out. It was a red poster with black lettering but that's all I could see. I'm trying to imagine what it said that led to them blurring it out.
reposted to Gab