9 ms·

Piracy is the answer. I'm a big fan of old scifi films and series and the more obscure ones are getting harder to track down. Quite a lot of the stuff produced

Piracy is the answer. I'm a big fan of old scifi films and series and the more obscure ones are getting harder to track down. Quite a lot of the stuff produced in the early 70s is sometimes available on DVD which can easily be ripped, but it depends on whether it was popular enough for them to issue it. With some old BBC series, I'm in the position of paying for a license, but not everything is available. Just before Xmas, I was searching for M.R.James Christmas Ghost Story adaptations and whilst I was able to get the newer Mark Gatiss produced ones from iPlayer, the older "Tractate Middoth" isn't available (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03n2rnf https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03n2rnf). There's going to be so many lost productions unless pirates get together to hoard old media.

majkinetor 4y ago
You can literarry find everything, but for rarest stuff you need to search for dedicated private commune. FYI: https://rutracker.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5940948 https://rutracker.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5940948
- ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
  Thank you, kind stranger, but I've already sailed across the pira-seas and have obtained a copy. My point was that as a BBC license fee payer (for many years), I have paid for that programme to be produced and by all rights it should be available on iPlayer. (I'm not even going to mention the complete rights cluster-duck that is Monkey Dust (and yes, I've already got a copy of all the series))
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
    Can you name some of the obscure 70s sci-fi? I would like to watch them. My downloads are TV series for Logan’s Run, Planet of the Apes, Battlestar Galactica, etc, but it’s limited and probably not too obscure and also… American besides the 70s Doctor Who saved Survivors (was that 80s?)
    - ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
      The TV series of Logan's Run and Planet of the Apes are reasonably obscure because they weren't too popular (I've got hold of both them, by the way). Some other titles to pique your interest: 1981 BBC version of The Day of the Triffids 1979 Tales of the Unexpected (not scifi really) 1979 Sapphire & Steel (with the most annoying introduction - they are not elements!) 1979 Quatermass series 1979 The Omega Factor 1978 Blake's 7 (should not really count as obscure due to the impact the series had) 1977 The Fantastic Journey 1977 Children of the Stones 1977 Beasts (anthology series by Nigel Kneale) 1975 Sky 1975 The Invisible Man (really cheesy, featuring David McCallum) 1975 The Changes 1974 Zodiac 1973 The Tomorrow People 1970 Timeslip 1969 The Owl Service 1968 The Champions 1966 The Time Tunnel 1966 Mission: Impossible 1965 Out of the Unknown 1960 The Strange World of Gurney Slade 1958 Quatermass and the Pit mini-series 1955 Quatermass II
      - sys_64738 4y ago
        BBC version of the Triffids is legendary in my book. Don't forget 1975 BBC show Survivors.
        TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
        I had to buy The Survivors on DVD because no one was seeding it, and no one was streaming it, either. I wonder how common that is for obscure TV shows? Where do you find these seeded? I only know about Pirate Bay and 1337x.
        ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
        I found season 1 of The Survivors easily enough, although it looks like season 3 might be available as well. I use prowlarr (https://wiki.servarr.com/en/prowlarr https://wiki.servarr.com/en/prowlarr) which searches a big list of various sites and integrates easily enough with qbittorrent. There's a handful of old British TV that I've bought on DVD because I couldn't find anyone seeding it. (Just bought the three seasons of Survivor on DVD now)
  - majkinetor 4y ago
    Sure, its a scam, like bunch of other things.
- ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
  Just the other day, I've been searching for the Open University video of "Hotel Hilbert" from 1996: https://www.open.ac.uk/library/digital-archive/program/video:FOUM546K https://www.open.ac.uk/library/digital-archive/program/video... Can't find that anywhere though I was hopeful that BFI might have had a copy: https://www2.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b80e92d21 https://www2.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b80e92d21
raffraffraff 4y ago
I grabbed those old M.R.James Christmas Ghost Stories years ago (no idea where I downloaded them from but they were obviously rips from fairly recent BBC broadcasts). BBC used to have an online shop where you could buy things legitimately but they shut it down. No idea why. Tractate Middoth adaptation is awful Gatiss tripe. (He's so hit-and-miss, and this is a miss for me). It's also on YouTube: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5MlQgGu6nCU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5MlQgGu6nCU My favorite of those M R.James adaptations, by far, is A View From A Hill. It's on YouTube. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lGh0ybk-xyk https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lGh0ybk-xyk
- ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
  I agree about Gatiss. I really enjoyed the original 1972 version of "The Amazing Mr Blunden" and was excited to see it getting remade last year (by Gatiss) but it was just meh. I went on a scavenge hunt for M.R. James productions after catching Robert Lloyd Parry's (https://www.nunkie.co.uk/the-mr-james-project https://www.nunkie.co.uk/the-mr-james-project) reading of two stories in the basement of Bristol Cathedral. I've got hold of A View From A Hill but haven't seen it yet. Incidentally, I did enjoy the recent Count Magnus.
prox 4y ago
I think society as a whole should have a long and in depth discussion on piracy in the first place. Piracy in the digital age is a weasel word used by vested interests. For instance datahoarding could be seen as a service to society. There is no actual pirating going on when you copy a digital file. Now there could be a loss of income if it grows out of control and artists are not being compensated. So obviously the discussion should focus on that. Steam already solved piracy for gaming. Make it easy to download and manage your games. Apparently the same hasn’t played out for movies and songs on the whole.
- the_af 4y ago
  > There is no actual pirating going on when you copy a digital file Note we did have this conversation, years if not decades before. Everyone "in the know" already understands this. I bet most HN readers understand this. It's just that general consumers don't, and there was a successful propaganda campaign by media owners and distributors to label this as "piracy", and the name stuck. It seems educating users is an uphill battle when fighting against a propaganda campaign by companies with deep pockets.
- throw10920 4y ago
  > There is no actual pirating going on when you copy a digital file. I can't tell if you're taking the word literally or not. For the sake of argument: Obviously there is no boat-stealing or plundering involved - no Johnny Depp or kraken here. But separately from whatever meaning you attach to the word "piracy" - illegally downloading creative works is theft. You are not entitled to someone else's creative work under any conditions other than those that they set, period. Unless an artist explicitly says "here's this public domain artwork, share it however you want" (which some people do!), pirating is stealing - you are taking the work of someone's hands without paying them for it, and it literally doesn't matter if you wouldn't have paid for it in the first place, because the work does not belong to you - it belongs to the creator and they get to set the terms of use. If you want a game or a TV show or a movie so badly - make it yourself. Put your own effort and time and resources and creative energy into it - then you can set whatever terms you want on its distribution. Believing that you have the right to take whatever creative work that someone else put their effort into that you can get away with not paying for is one of the most extreme cases of entitlement I've ever witnessed, and it demonstrates an extreme selfishness and lack of respect for other human beings as equals. I would be very interested to hear what moral axioms could justify the position of "I can take whatever I want from other people as long as it doesn't deprive them of a physical good".
clnq 4y ago
And for most non-English books and movies, good luck buying them anywhere in the English-speaking world.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Popeyes 4y ago
I assume you have already found this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MlQgGu6nCU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MlQgGu6nCU I have been told that the BBC have a massive digital vault of shows that are available to producers obviously since iPlayer came into being any shows listed are there, just not available. And they are constantly archiving old material.
qwertfisch 4y ago
Doesn't the BBC offer a service where you can request recordings of any historic broadcast? The German public-service broadcasters like ARD, ZDF and many regional ones offer such a service. I can request a program from the 70ies, tell the name and (helpfully) where and when it was broadcasted. Then they search through their massive archive, make a copy on DVD and send them to you. It's not cheap (up to 40€ per hour of program), but it is legal for personal use. No need here to pirate anything, except very very old broadcasts from before ... around 1967.
bacchusracine 4y ago
>I'm a big fan of old scifi films and series and the more obscure ones are getting harder to track down. Gets even harder when you're dealing with hearing loss and it's nearly impossible to find subtitles for some older releases, despite there having been such when they were available....even for some non-obscure stuff. Some stuff is sitting in streaming-rights purgatory, the last release was on DVD and no one has it any more, etc etc... The people at OpenSubtitles.org do their best to curate a good collection but those are only as good as the people who upload them.

majkinetor 4y ago

You can literarry find everything, but for rarest stuff you need to search for dedicated private commune. FYI: https://rutracker.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5940948 https://rutracker.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5940948

ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
Thank you, kind stranger, but I've already sailed across the pira-seas and have obtained a copy. My point was that as a BBC license fee payer (for many years), I have paid for that programme to be produced and by all rights it should be available on iPlayer. (I'm not even going to mention the complete rights cluster-duck that is Monkey Dust (and yes, I've already got a copy of all the series))
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
  Can you name some of the obscure 70s sci-fi? I would like to watch them. My downloads are TV series for Logan’s Run, Planet of the Apes, Battlestar Galactica, etc, but it’s limited and probably not too obscure and also… American besides the 70s Doctor Who saved Survivors (was that 80s?)
  - ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
    The TV series of Logan's Run and Planet of the Apes are reasonably obscure because they weren't too popular (I've got hold of both them, by the way). Some other titles to pique your interest: 1981 BBC version of The Day of the Triffids 1979 Tales of the Unexpected (not scifi really) 1979 Sapphire & Steel (with the most annoying introduction - they are not elements!) 1979 Quatermass series 1979 The Omega Factor 1978 Blake's 7 (should not really count as obscure due to the impact the series had) 1977 The Fantastic Journey 1977 Children of the Stones 1977 Beasts (anthology series by Nigel Kneale) 1975 Sky 1975 The Invisible Man (really cheesy, featuring David McCallum) 1975 The Changes 1974 Zodiac 1973 The Tomorrow People 1970 Timeslip 1969 The Owl Service 1968 The Champions 1966 The Time Tunnel 1966 Mission: Impossible 1965 Out of the Unknown 1960 The Strange World of Gurney Slade 1958 Quatermass and the Pit mini-series 1955 Quatermass II
    - sys_64738 4y ago
      BBC version of the Triffids is legendary in my book. Don't forget 1975 BBC show Survivors.
      - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
        I had to buy The Survivors on DVD because no one was seeding it, and no one was streaming it, either. I wonder how common that is for obscure TV shows? Where do you find these seeded? I only know about Pirate Bay and 1337x.
        ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
        I found season 1 of The Survivors easily enough, although it looks like season 3 might be available as well. I use prowlarr (https://wiki.servarr.com/en/prowlarr https://wiki.servarr.com/en/prowlarr) which searches a big list of various sites and integrates easily enough with qbittorrent. There's a handful of old British TV that I've bought on DVD because I couldn't find anyone seeding it. (Just bought the three seasons of Survivor on DVD now)
- majkinetor 4y ago
  Sure, its a scam, like bunch of other things.
ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
Just the other day, I've been searching for the Open University video of "Hotel Hilbert" from 1996: https://www.open.ac.uk/library/digital-archive/program/video:FOUM546K https://www.open.ac.uk/library/digital-archive/program/video... Can't find that anywhere though I was hopeful that BFI might have had a copy: https://www2.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b80e92d21 https://www2.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b80e92d21

raffraffraff 4y ago

I grabbed those old M.R.James Christmas Ghost Stories years ago (no idea where I downloaded them from but they were obviously rips from fairly recent BBC broadcasts). BBC used to have an online shop where you could buy things legitimately but they shut it down. No idea why. Tractate Middoth adaptation is awful Gatiss tripe. (He's so hit-and-miss, and this is a miss for me). It's also on YouTube: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5MlQgGu6nCU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5MlQgGu6nCU My favorite of those M R.James adaptations, by far, is A View From A Hill. It's on YouTube. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lGh0ybk-xyk https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lGh0ybk-xyk

ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
I agree about Gatiss. I really enjoyed the original 1972 version of "The Amazing Mr Blunden" and was excited to see it getting remade last year (by Gatiss) but it was just meh. I went on a scavenge hunt for M.R. James productions after catching Robert Lloyd Parry's (https://www.nunkie.co.uk/the-mr-james-project https://www.nunkie.co.uk/the-mr-james-project) reading of two stories in the basement of Bristol Cathedral. I've got hold of A View From A Hill but haven't seen it yet. Incidentally, I did enjoy the recent Count Magnus.

prox 4y ago

I think society as a whole should have a long and in depth discussion on piracy in the first place. Piracy in the digital age is a weasel word used by vested interests. For instance datahoarding could be seen as a service to society. There is no actual pirating going on when you copy a digital file. Now there could be a loss of income if it grows out of control and artists are not being compensated. So obviously the discussion should focus on that. Steam already solved piracy for gaming. Make it easy to download and manage your games. Apparently the same hasn’t played out for movies and songs on the whole.

the_af 4y ago
> There is no actual pirating going on when you copy a digital file Note we did have this conversation, years if not decades before. Everyone "in the know" already understands this. I bet most HN readers understand this. It's just that general consumers don't, and there was a successful propaganda campaign by media owners and distributors to label this as "piracy", and the name stuck. It seems educating users is an uphill battle when fighting against a propaganda campaign by companies with deep pockets.
throw10920 4y ago
> There is no actual pirating going on when you copy a digital file. I can't tell if you're taking the word literally or not. For the sake of argument: Obviously there is no boat-stealing or plundering involved - no Johnny Depp or kraken here. But separately from whatever meaning you attach to the word "piracy" - illegally downloading creative works is theft. You are not entitled to someone else's creative work under any conditions other than those that they set, period. Unless an artist explicitly says "here's this public domain artwork, share it however you want" (which some people do!), pirating is stealing - you are taking the work of someone's hands without paying them for it, and it literally doesn't matter if you wouldn't have paid for it in the first place, because the work does not belong to you - it belongs to the creator and they get to set the terms of use. If you want a game or a TV show or a movie so badly - make it yourself. Put your own effort and time and resources and creative energy into it - then you can set whatever terms you want on its distribution. Believing that you have the right to take whatever creative work that someone else put their effort into that you can get away with not paying for is one of the most extreme cases of entitlement I've ever witnessed, and it demonstrates an extreme selfishness and lack of respect for other human beings as equals. I would be very interested to hear what moral axioms could justify the position of "I can take whatever I want from other people as long as it doesn't deprive them of a physical good".

clnq 4y ago

And for most non-English books and movies, good luck buying them anywhere in the English-speaking world.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Popeyes 4y ago

I assume you have already found this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MlQgGu6nCU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MlQgGu6nCU I have been told that the BBC have a massive digital vault of shows that are available to producers obviously since iPlayer came into being any shows listed are there, just not available. And they are constantly archiving old material.

qwertfisch 4y ago

Doesn't the BBC offer a service where you can request recordings of any historic broadcast? The German public-service broadcasters like ARD, ZDF and many regional ones offer such a service. I can request a program from the 70ies, tell the name and (helpfully) where and when it was broadcasted. Then they search through their massive archive, make a copy on DVD and send them to you. It's not cheap (up to 40€ per hour of program), but it is legal for personal use. No need here to pirate anything, except very very old broadcasts from before ... around 1967.

bacchusracine 4y ago

>I'm a big fan of old scifi films and series and the more obscure ones are getting harder to track down. Gets even harder when you're dealing with hearing loss and it's nearly impossible to find subtitles for some older releases, despite there having been such when they were available....even for some non-obscure stuff. Some stuff is sitting in streaming-rights purgatory, the last release was on DVD and no one has it any more, etc etc... The people at OpenSubtitles.org do their best to curate a good collection but those are only as good as the people who upload them.