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The fact that even guys as influential as Spielberg and Tarantino are worried about having their past work censored is the most convincing reason I've seen to o

The fact that even guys as influential as Spielberg and Tarantino are worried about having their past work censored is the most convincing reason I've seen to own your own data. For movies it's as easy as obtaining DRM-free copies of the movies you care about, saving them to an SSD, and installing a copy of Plex. Do that with the movies, music and books you love. They are a part of our cultural history. It's almost a guarantee that any copy you don't own and control will at some point in the future be revised. I want the real history not what the powers that be tell me it was. It's virtually guaranteed that Amazon, Netflix et. al. will not store this stuff for you with integrity, it is built into the nature of the system.

ksec 4y ago
>The fact that even guys as influential as Spielberg and Tarantino are worried about having their past work censored So I guess HN, or most Americans ( East or West End ) can now finally agree this is a serious problem? I still remember in 2019 and even in 2021, HN's majority position was that people were too focused on culture war and this is only the minority of people who cares about it.
ekianjo 4y ago
> The fact that even guys as influential as Spielberg and Tarantino are worried about having their past work censored is the most convincing reason I've seen to own your own data. No need to even go to censorship, you have people like George Lucas who go out of their way to destroy their previous productions.
- zx8080 4y ago
  What did Lucas do?
  - yreg 4y ago
    He remastered Star Wars several times and some people are apparently convinced that he 'destroyed' the work by doing that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changes_in_Star_Wars_re-releases#Significant_changes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changes_in_Star_Wars_re-releas...
    - Findecanor 4y ago
      George Lucas has claimed that he cut and spliced the original negative when editing the Special Edition of the original trilogy, so that the master copies of the original films don't physically exist.
    - danparsonson 4y ago
      He didn't just remaster, he repeatedly altered the films, even changing the sense of some scenes, perhaps most notably and notoriously the stand-off between Han and Greedo. Most of his revisions have been questionable at best, ham-fisted and cringeworthy at worst. Count me among the purists who think he ruined his good work ;-)
      - caseysoftware 4y ago
        While Han vs Greedo is the most egregious, the style is the most jarring. You can tell all the inserted scenes because the colors are off, the animations are not blended well, and it feels off uncanny valley style.
        philwelch 4y ago
        I think the Jabba scene is arguably worse because it simply repeats the same lines we already had in the Greedo scene for no real gain. It also undermines the dramatic reveal of the much-discussed but never-seen Jabba in ROTJ. Plus the unnecessary fan service of Boba Fett literally turning and staring at the camera at the end.
    - red-iron-pine 4y ago
      I'll make an exception for authors who want to tweak or improve their work. Sometimes directors have to give into the limitations of their medium -- time, money, meddling producers, etc. If they want to revise it later to meet their original vision, more power to them. Also entirely possible it was a cash grab; Skywalker Ranch needed a new wing or something.
      - 4y ago
  - Pinegulf 4y ago
    Did Han shoot first? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_shot_first https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_shot_first
- samhuk 4y ago
  I didn't follow the Lucasfilm acquisition too closely when it was all going down, but something that has confused me is that Lucas seems like a fairly talented guy with a passion for what he does, so how does it make sense that he actively wants to destroy his legacy? I'm really doubtful that it's as simple as Lucas one day having a left-wing/progressivism epiphany or some other grand artistic change, sell Lucasfilm to Disney, then participate in the destruction of their IP. Wasn't he promised "treatments" and general involvement in the latest trilogy, then Disney back-stabbed him last-minute? I vaguely remember some drama about that. Anyway, long story short, I think that there is more to the story, such as him being promised one thing and another thing happening, etc.
  - barrysteve 4y ago
    He knew his style of films were over, so he sold the franchise and let Disney take the burn for it. It's difficult to see this as a political event, where he was outplayed. He's worked with and against the big cats in Hollywood his whole career, he specifically made career decisions to 'get away' from Hollywood meddling in his work. He knew what he was doing and this mythical George Lucas character, who is victim and hero in one man, is getting a bit long in the tooth.
    - Technotroll 4y ago
      I, for one, would love to see another George Lucas movie.
  - joshjdr 4y ago
    I think they’re referring to the remastering of the original trilogy, long before Disney got involved.
  - drewcoo 4y ago
    When I consider this, I don't think there's any legacy there to ruin. The only thing that made the first movies watchable was gone long before Disney bought it up. https://collider.com/star-wars-george-lucas-wife-marcia https://collider.com/star-wars-george-lucas-wife-marcia
- HeckFeck 4y ago
  I've deliberately sought the DVD edition of the unaltered original trilogy. The editing that makes Greedo shoot first looks cheap. It also doesn't make sense; someone pointing a gun at you is a clear sign of intent, and Han was simply defending himself. Han's decision to shoot first was also in line with his character as the rogue for hire. Agh, I know the series is still raking in millions. But I can't enjoy the edits because my brain cries 'blasphmeny!'
  - philwelch 4y ago
    Entertainment media seem to have significantly different use-of-force standards than any real life legal or moral statutes. Maybe because the drama of protracted Mexican standoffs would be undercut if people reacted realistically to having guns pointed at them. The Greedo scene has been tweaked multiple times. In the most recent version available on Disney+ (confirmed to be Lucas’ work), Greedo exclaims “macklunkey!” just before the shooting starts, which I find hilariously absurd.
  - ReptileMan 4y ago
    The whole point is that Han Solo is badass. So he doesn't need high bar to shoot. Luke is the crybaby. The original trilogy Han will totally opportunity shoot Grido in the back if he knew he was sent for him and Grido was walking the street. And the only thing he will feel is recoil. And I know blasters don't have any recoil.
    - hirundo 4y ago
      Even flashlights have recoil. Not that Han would feel it. https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/c206f2/do_lasers_have_recoil/ https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/c206f2/do_laser...
  - dspillett 4y ago
    > I've deliberately sought the DVD edition of the unaltered original trilogy The best you are likely to find is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmy%27s_Despecialized_Edition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmy%27s_Despecialized_Editio... – I don't think the unaltered editions were ever released on DVD or BluRay at all, just VHS and LaserDisc.
- deleted 4y ago
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- bookofjoe 4y ago
  >A work of art is never finished, only abandoned.—Paul Valéry
- zczc 4y ago
  Well, Spielberg himself replaced guns with walkies-talkies in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.T._the_Extra-Terrestrial#/media/File:ET1982.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.T._the_Extra-Terrestrial#/me...
  - iconjack 4y ago
    Literally the subhed of the article: "Director has criticised the practice of re-editing older films while expressing remorse over removing guns in a later edition of ET"
  - ycombobreaker 4y ago
    That was my first thought upon reading the title. However, people learn, grow, and change. I believe his argument will carry more weight with the acknowledgment and duscussion of his own prior decision. It's not hypocrisy; it's a lesson learned.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      And he's a director! His job is to experiment and use new tools as they come available, and he's realized he made a mistake. I have no problem with people making new versions of existing works; the problem I have is destroying the originals; even if destroyed by the author. The existence of copyright itself is a "deal" between society and an individual, we give the individual certain rights and privileges in exchange for certain benefits to society. Only now has the ability to go back and change things resulted in large-scale destruction of personal copies of that original thing.
- deleted 4y ago
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DeathArrow 4y ago
I would rather donate to a public effort to archive books, films, music and articles. I don't want to hoard the data myself and maintain backups. If The Internet Archive can do it for websites, we can find a similar solution for films, too.
- john_the_writer 4y ago
  the only issue with that, is you don't own the copy-right, so donating it isn't possible. If you have a copy of HarryPotter and want to make sure it stays as is, then you have to back it up.
  - DeathArrow 4y ago
    But that only works for me and my kids. And for physical books, I am kind of doing it. Bill kids won't have that copy of Harry Potter.
- malermeister 4y ago
  That already exists. It's called torrent trackers. There used to be one called what.cd [0] that, to me, was like the Library of Alexandria, but for music. It was burned down in the name of commercial interest. It might not be legal, but that's because the industry's interest is diametrically opposed to ours. If it's moral and worthy of support, I'll leave for you to decide. [0] https://www.vice.com/en/article/3de7vj/remembering-whatcd-the-internets-greatest-music-archive https://www.vice.com/en/article/3de7vj/remembering-whatcd-th...
  - DeathArrow 4y ago
    Torrent trackers are useless on long term because no one will seed for infinity.
    - felixg3 4y ago
      Well, then you haven't witnessed the beauty of What.cd or PTP. A bunch of data hoarders with webseeds. Find that rare promo release from 1978 on Vinyl? Check. Get a lossless copy of a professionally digitized Laserdisc release of a film? Check.
friendlyHornet 4y ago
One of my favourite albums of all time ("Witchcraft Destroys Minds and Reaps Souls" by Coven, released 1969) was very recently taken off of streaming platforms I don't know the reason it was removed but it was like a I was pinched and realised how little control I have over my favourite music. The album is still on YouTube but I don't know for how long. I bought the vinyl, even though i currently don't have a record player but plan to get one I have to start preserving DRM free or physical copies of media I like. I always knew there was a risk of stuff being removed but always put off thinking about it for convenience, but not anymore
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  This has always been a pain about streaming services. The reason is almost always some licensing dispute or contract running out between the publisher, streaming company, and artist. Same kind of thing as when Netflix loses a movie or TV show. This is a good reason to still buy LPs, CDs, or DRM free mp3s since, for smaller artists, getting those rights back may not be worth bothering with for a giant like Spotify or Apple. I'm not aware of this happening for explicitly censorious reasons, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if it did.
- wyre 4y ago
  I see the album on Apple Music listed as Witchcraft
  - friendlyHornet 4y ago
    Maybe it is geolocked? What country are you in? (You don't have to say if you're not comfortable)
Technotroll 4y ago
I’m sorry to say that this is a rather naïve approach to long term preservation of data. There are surprisingly few solutions to preserve consumer data for more than a decade or so. If you really want to preserve your data for, say, decades, much less hundreds of years, then you need to think beyond the storage media you’re currently using. Even CDs fade after merely a few years of safe storage, leading to errors and data loss in the long run. Thus there are a multitude of factors you need to take into account before storing data for longer than a decade or so.
- beepbooptheory 4y ago
  Is tape the answer here?
  - cm2187 4y ago
    To cover the genitals on the paintings?
- pacija 4y ago
  Well, over last two decades my mp3s, flacs, avis, mkvs, pdfs, epubs and others moved between CDs, DVDs, HDDs to land at a ZFS array replicated to another ZFS array at the moment. The way I use them has changed over the years (cloud streaming from navidrome, kodi for local playing, azuracast for radio broadcast etc.), but the media files themselves are the same.
  - cm2187 4y ago
    As long as you don’t have real media files or other codecs that have disappeared (or will disappear - imagine if we move to a new cpu instruction set, I assume not every codec library will be recompiled).
    - bombcar 4y ago
      If you maintain lossless storage you can switch formats as necessary; the problem really becomes a major issue when you have various formats you don't use very often and you don't notice that something became unplayable. Luckily the number of people obsessed with emulating old systems saves the day for now. But at some point things like Video CDs and the Compact Disc-Interactive systems may fully fade into history.
oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
> It's almost a guarantee that any copy you don't own and control will at some point in the future be revised. This reminds me of the apple 'service' that automatically replaced your MP3s with its own 'sanctioned' digital files. It turned several of my tracks into unlistenable, censored versions and I've been incredibly wary of digital-only content ever since.
- MarcoZavala 4y ago
  [dead]
causi 4y ago
It's already happened. Netflix and Hulu both removed the episode of Community where someone was cosplaying a dark elf because it looked too much like blackface. Never mind the fact the person doing it is insane, its resemblance to blackface is the joke, and his character dies and is removed from the show after less than a minute of screen time.
- willcipriano 4y ago
  They also edited out a Bill Nye segment where he said there are two genders. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/bill-nye-the-science-guy-netflix-edit-removed-censored-gender-sex-chromosome-transgenderism-a7716881.html https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/bil... Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
  - defrost 4y ago
    Is there an issue with the removal of an actual scientific inaccuracy from a science program? This: > "See, there are only two possibilities: XX, a girl, or XY, a boy. The chance of becoming either a boy or a girl is always 1 in 2, a 50-50 chance either way. It’s like flipping a coin: X you’re a girl, Y you’re a boy.” is out by a few percent .. numbers wise it's more inaccurate than claiming there's no gold in the earths crust. ( see [1] ) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex I imagine Nye himself authorised the change to his own work as I assume he later corrected himself (as appears to be implied in your link).
    - willcipriano 4y ago
      Take a look at the chart you provided "Prevalences of various conditions that have been called intersex" Why does it have a "Sex specificity" column? Why does it contain the words male and female?
      - jackmott42 4y ago
        that column also contains the word "none" in some cases. And in either case it is all just a judgement call people made for the conditions. The semantic sparring over sex and gender has a pretty simple compromise, that people who want to say it is a spectrum and people who want to say it is binary should be able to agree on and be happy with: it is a bimodal distribution of course the problem is that is a nuanced idea and humans can't handle nuance. Maybe you can, and I can, but WE as a human group can't. We prefer to drive ourselves literally insane over the semantic argument. oh well.
pierat 4y ago
I would kindly recommend looking into Jellyfin. It's a FLOSS equivalent of Plex. (And unlike Plex, isn't closed source nagware on 'premium features') But the rest I agree with. And to your point, I just found a trove of rare 'banned' cartoons. Naturally, they're banned primarily for depictions of Japanese (WWII), and of black people in various degrading roles. I do not take enjoyment in watching them. However, due to censorship, these could be lost. And that would be a bigger loss compared to their inherent lack of compassion.
- ascagnel_ 4y ago
  I would love to move my Plex server to Jellyfin, but it's not yet at feature parity: - PlexAmp is a much, much better tool for consuming music than the Jellyfin UI - Prologue[0] is an app that hooks into your local Plex library to play audiobooks; Jellyfin has no equivalent that I'm aware of - There's a general dearth of iOS and Android apps that support downloads/offline play that sync play progress back to the server
  - ranbato 4y ago
    For Android I use YATSE (paid) https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.leetzone.android.yatsewidgetfree https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.leetzone.a...
- jstarfish 4y ago
  > Naturally, they're banned primarily for depictions of Japanese (WWII), and of black people in various degrading roles. I do not take enjoyment in watching them. However, due to censorship, these could be lost. And that would be a bigger loss compared to their inherent lack of compassion. Why do you feel this is worth preserving? It's designed to evoke positive emotion (laughter) and outrage/hatred about something we don't condone anymore. In addition to being propaganda, outside the context of warmongering, it's toxic. We don't insist on archiving artifacts from smear campaigns between white politicians every election season. But we need to forever archive demeaning racist cartoons? You'd have more of a case defending "Song of the South," which at least has artistic merit. We lose a musical experience with that one. It's the "vampire" problem...immortality is not a good thing. Outdated/bad ideas are supposed to fade with the flow of time, not spread forever for later "research."
macNchz 4y ago
Sometimes these edits can be pretty subtle as well: a while ago my wife and I started watching the original early-90s Beverly Hills 90210 on one of the streaming platforms. It’s a kind of absurd and fun pop-cultural time capsule of a show. After a few episodes, though, I started to realize there was something not quite right. It turns out that much of the music featured in the original airing of the show wasn’t licensed in a way it could be used long term, and over the years it has been replaced with terrible stock songs or jarringly anachronistic choices that sound totally out of place. Entire scenes and episodes have been cut from the seasons distributed on streaming platforms, because they featured live concerts that couldn’t be edited. The original had performances by the Flaming Lips, among many others, that simply can’t be watched now, except if by chance someone copied an old VHS to YouTube. Music was a big part of the original show–in addition to the live shows it featured all sorts of great pop songs from the time, which was part of why it was such a hit with teenagers when it aired. It’s such a bummer they stripped it all out! There are some places online with copies of early DVD releases that have more music, but still not all of it. The original is locked away in a vault somewhere and almost certainly won’t ever be enjoyed in a complete state.
- deleted 4y ago
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- lazystar 4y ago
  This same music licensing issue happened to Charmed as well. The opening credits theme is gone; the guest bands that played at the end of each episode are gone. A ton of late 90s early 2000s culture, just... gone. No one who watches that show today will ever understand why it was enjoyable to those who originally watched it.
  - wink 4y ago
    Now I'm really wondering if they cut that from the German dubs, or if I didn't pay attention, or if I simply didn't watch enough episodes, or not in full.
- ryathal 4y ago
  So many shows are unavailable or different because of ridiculous licensing rules around music. Scrubs has several different versions of music, The Drew Carey Show is basically impossible to find because of music. If Congress wanted to ever do something pro-consumer, passing a law that ends all this nonsense around licensing and require all licensing to be delivery method agnostic. whether a show is premiering, a rerun, syndicated, streamed, or on DVD it should be the same show.
seanalltogether 4y ago
The music in Scrubs is pretty integral to the character of the show, but they had to change many of the songs for streaming, so the only way to watch the show as it was meant to be is from the dvds which will slowly disappear as demand for physical media dries up.
- ascagnel_ 4y ago
  It's because, before TV on DVD became a major thing in the mid-00s, TV shows would get limited licenses rather than perpetual licenses as a way to keep costs down. Most episodes would air once or twice (its premiere, and a summer re-run), and if a show hit its 100th episode (at which point it became feasible to license it for syndication), the studio would renegotiate music licenses (and some popular shows never entered syndication because of a failure to renegotiate these licenses, while others, like The Wonder Years, entered syndication with radically altered soundtracks). Once TV shows started to release on DVD in a big way, and then digitally a few years later, it became immediately obvious that shows would need longer music licenses, and so the issue has been solved for newer works.
fallat 4y ago
> it is built into the nature of the system I would love to see an elaboration. I think you're saying this because it's in their interest for wide appeal and so will adjust their "products" as necessary to please.
justinator 4y ago
One place this didn't happen was on The Young Ones. Where would we be without The Damned playing Video Nasty, or Motörhead playing Ace of Spades? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2H_7LY5LqM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2H_7LY5LqM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOAz4nPNvLI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOAz4nPNvLI Funnily they had musical guests so that they could sell the show as a variety show, and get the funding to do something so silly.
listenallyall 4y ago
Spielberg is "worried" about it, in part, because he did it himself. In later releases of E.T.: The Exta-Terrestrial, Spielberg edited a crucial scene so that it no longer showed police officers pointing guns at a group of children (among other changes). It's a good sign that he has publicly acknowledged that the edits were a mistake and the original theatrical version of E.T. is available.
nicenewtemp84 4y ago
It's honestly amazing how many of my saved favorites list on YouTube goes missing years later. I know make sure to download any video I want to be able to watch again. Because between creators changing style, getting worried, going away, or getting stricken down by YouTube bots, it seems like anything worth watching won't actually be available to watch 3 years later.
KETpXDDzR 4y ago
A friend of mine recently made that experience. Her Amazon account got stolen, Amazon didn't care, and now she lost access to all movies and books she "owned". Fortunately, with the rise of Z-Library, I was able to recover her books (she already paid for them, so I'm ok with downloading it from such a shady source). I guess we have to fall back to piracy if we want to stay in control.

ksec 4y ago

>The fact that even guys as influential as Spielberg and Tarantino are worried about having their past work censored So I guess HN, or most Americans ( East or West End ) can now finally agree this is a serious problem? I still remember in 2019 and even in 2021, HN's majority position was that people were too focused on culture war and this is only the minority of people who cares about it.

ekianjo 4y ago

> The fact that even guys as influential as Spielberg and Tarantino are worried about having their past work censored is the most convincing reason I've seen to own your own data. No need to even go to censorship, you have people like George Lucas who go out of their way to destroy their previous productions.

zx8080 4y ago
What did Lucas do?
- yreg 4y ago
  He remastered Star Wars several times and some people are apparently convinced that he 'destroyed' the work by doing that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changes_in_Star_Wars_re-releases#Significant_changes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changes_in_Star_Wars_re-releas...
  - Findecanor 4y ago
    George Lucas has claimed that he cut and spliced the original negative when editing the Special Edition of the original trilogy, so that the master copies of the original films don't physically exist.
  - danparsonson 4y ago
    He didn't just remaster, he repeatedly altered the films, even changing the sense of some scenes, perhaps most notably and notoriously the stand-off between Han and Greedo. Most of his revisions have been questionable at best, ham-fisted and cringeworthy at worst. Count me among the purists who think he ruined his good work ;-)
    - caseysoftware 4y ago
      While Han vs Greedo is the most egregious, the style is the most jarring. You can tell all the inserted scenes because the colors are off, the animations are not blended well, and it feels off uncanny valley style.
      - philwelch 4y ago
        I think the Jabba scene is arguably worse because it simply repeats the same lines we already had in the Greedo scene for no real gain. It also undermines the dramatic reveal of the much-discussed but never-seen Jabba in ROTJ. Plus the unnecessary fan service of Boba Fett literally turning and staring at the camera at the end.
  - red-iron-pine 4y ago
    I'll make an exception for authors who want to tweak or improve their work. Sometimes directors have to give into the limitations of their medium -- time, money, meddling producers, etc. If they want to revise it later to meet their original vision, more power to them. Also entirely possible it was a cash grab; Skywalker Ranch needed a new wing or something.
    - 4y ago
- Pinegulf 4y ago
  Did Han shoot first? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_shot_first https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_shot_first
samhuk 4y ago
I didn't follow the Lucasfilm acquisition too closely when it was all going down, but something that has confused me is that Lucas seems like a fairly talented guy with a passion for what he does, so how does it make sense that he actively wants to destroy his legacy? I'm really doubtful that it's as simple as Lucas one day having a left-wing/progressivism epiphany or some other grand artistic change, sell Lucasfilm to Disney, then participate in the destruction of their IP. Wasn't he promised "treatments" and general involvement in the latest trilogy, then Disney back-stabbed him last-minute? I vaguely remember some drama about that. Anyway, long story short, I think that there is more to the story, such as him being promised one thing and another thing happening, etc.
- barrysteve 4y ago
  He knew his style of films were over, so he sold the franchise and let Disney take the burn for it. It's difficult to see this as a political event, where he was outplayed. He's worked with and against the big cats in Hollywood his whole career, he specifically made career decisions to 'get away' from Hollywood meddling in his work. He knew what he was doing and this mythical George Lucas character, who is victim and hero in one man, is getting a bit long in the tooth.
  - Technotroll 4y ago
    I, for one, would love to see another George Lucas movie.
- joshjdr 4y ago
  I think they’re referring to the remastering of the original trilogy, long before Disney got involved.
- drewcoo 4y ago
  When I consider this, I don't think there's any legacy there to ruin. The only thing that made the first movies watchable was gone long before Disney bought it up. https://collider.com/star-wars-george-lucas-wife-marcia https://collider.com/star-wars-george-lucas-wife-marcia
HeckFeck 4y ago
I've deliberately sought the DVD edition of the unaltered original trilogy. The editing that makes Greedo shoot first looks cheap. It also doesn't make sense; someone pointing a gun at you is a clear sign of intent, and Han was simply defending himself. Han's decision to shoot first was also in line with his character as the rogue for hire. Agh, I know the series is still raking in millions. But I can't enjoy the edits because my brain cries 'blasphmeny!'
- philwelch 4y ago
  Entertainment media seem to have significantly different use-of-force standards than any real life legal or moral statutes. Maybe because the drama of protracted Mexican standoffs would be undercut if people reacted realistically to having guns pointed at them. The Greedo scene has been tweaked multiple times. In the most recent version available on Disney+ (confirmed to be Lucas’ work), Greedo exclaims “macklunkey!” just before the shooting starts, which I find hilariously absurd.
- ReptileMan 4y ago
  The whole point is that Han Solo is badass. So he doesn't need high bar to shoot. Luke is the crybaby. The original trilogy Han will totally opportunity shoot Grido in the back if he knew he was sent for him and Grido was walking the street. And the only thing he will feel is recoil. And I know blasters don't have any recoil.
  - hirundo 4y ago
    Even flashlights have recoil. Not that Han would feel it. https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/c206f2/do_lasers_have_recoil/ https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/c206f2/do_laser...
- dspillett 4y ago
  > I've deliberately sought the DVD edition of the unaltered original trilogy The best you are likely to find is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmy%27s_Despecialized_Edition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmy%27s_Despecialized_Editio... – I don't think the unaltered editions were ever released on DVD or BluRay at all, just VHS and LaserDisc.
deleted 4y ago
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bookofjoe 4y ago
>A work of art is never finished, only abandoned.—Paul Valéry
zczc 4y ago
Well, Spielberg himself replaced guns with walkies-talkies in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.T._the_Extra-Terrestrial#/media/File:ET1982.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.T._the_Extra-Terrestrial#/me...
- iconjack 4y ago
  Literally the subhed of the article: "Director has criticised the practice of re-editing older films while expressing remorse over removing guns in a later edition of ET"
- ycombobreaker 4y ago
  That was my first thought upon reading the title. However, people learn, grow, and change. I believe his argument will carry more weight with the acknowledgment and duscussion of his own prior decision. It's not hypocrisy; it's a lesson learned.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    And he's a director! His job is to experiment and use new tools as they come available, and he's realized he made a mistake. I have no problem with people making new versions of existing works; the problem I have is destroying the originals; even if destroyed by the author. The existence of copyright itself is a "deal" between society and an individual, we give the individual certain rights and privileges in exchange for certain benefits to society. Only now has the ability to go back and change things resulted in large-scale destruction of personal copies of that original thing.
deleted 4y ago
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DeathArrow 4y ago

I would rather donate to a public effort to archive books, films, music and articles. I don't want to hoard the data myself and maintain backups. If The Internet Archive can do it for websites, we can find a similar solution for films, too.

john_the_writer 4y ago
the only issue with that, is you don't own the copy-right, so donating it isn't possible. If you have a copy of HarryPotter and want to make sure it stays as is, then you have to back it up.
- DeathArrow 4y ago
  But that only works for me and my kids. And for physical books, I am kind of doing it. Bill kids won't have that copy of Harry Potter.
malermeister 4y ago
That already exists. It's called torrent trackers. There used to be one called what.cd [0] that, to me, was like the Library of Alexandria, but for music. It was burned down in the name of commercial interest. It might not be legal, but that's because the industry's interest is diametrically opposed to ours. If it's moral and worthy of support, I'll leave for you to decide. [0] https://www.vice.com/en/article/3de7vj/remembering-whatcd-the-internets-greatest-music-archive https://www.vice.com/en/article/3de7vj/remembering-whatcd-th...
- DeathArrow 4y ago
  Torrent trackers are useless on long term because no one will seed for infinity.
  - felixg3 4y ago
    Well, then you haven't witnessed the beauty of What.cd or PTP. A bunch of data hoarders with webseeds. Find that rare promo release from 1978 on Vinyl? Check. Get a lossless copy of a professionally digitized Laserdisc release of a film? Check.

friendlyHornet 4y ago

One of my favourite albums of all time ("Witchcraft Destroys Minds and Reaps Souls" by Coven, released 1969) was very recently taken off of streaming platforms I don't know the reason it was removed but it was like a I was pinched and realised how little control I have over my favourite music. The album is still on YouTube but I don't know for how long. I bought the vinyl, even though i currently don't have a record player but plan to get one I have to start preserving DRM free or physical copies of media I like. I always knew there was a risk of stuff being removed but always put off thinking about it for convenience, but not anymore

AlexandrB 4y ago
This has always been a pain about streaming services. The reason is almost always some licensing dispute or contract running out between the publisher, streaming company, and artist. Same kind of thing as when Netflix loses a movie or TV show. This is a good reason to still buy LPs, CDs, or DRM free mp3s since, for smaller artists, getting those rights back may not be worth bothering with for a giant like Spotify or Apple. I'm not aware of this happening for explicitly censorious reasons, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if it did.
wyre 4y ago
I see the album on Apple Music listed as Witchcraft
- friendlyHornet 4y ago
  Maybe it is geolocked? What country are you in? (You don't have to say if you're not comfortable)

Technotroll 4y ago

I’m sorry to say that this is a rather naïve approach to long term preservation of data. There are surprisingly few solutions to preserve consumer data for more than a decade or so. If you really want to preserve your data for, say, decades, much less hundreds of years, then you need to think beyond the storage media you’re currently using. Even CDs fade after merely a few years of safe storage, leading to errors and data loss in the long run. Thus there are a multitude of factors you need to take into account before storing data for longer than a decade or so.

beepbooptheory 4y ago
Is tape the answer here?
- cm2187 4y ago
  To cover the genitals on the paintings?
pacija 4y ago
Well, over last two decades my mp3s, flacs, avis, mkvs, pdfs, epubs and others moved between CDs, DVDs, HDDs to land at a ZFS array replicated to another ZFS array at the moment. The way I use them has changed over the years (cloud streaming from navidrome, kodi for local playing, azuracast for radio broadcast etc.), but the media files themselves are the same.
- cm2187 4y ago
  As long as you don’t have real media files or other codecs that have disappeared (or will disappear - imagine if we move to a new cpu instruction set, I assume not every codec library will be recompiled).
  - bombcar 4y ago
    If you maintain lossless storage you can switch formats as necessary; the problem really becomes a major issue when you have various formats you don't use very often and you don't notice that something became unplayable. Luckily the number of people obsessed with emulating old systems saves the day for now. But at some point things like Video CDs and the Compact Disc-Interactive systems may fully fade into history.

oneeyedpigeon 4y ago

> It's almost a guarantee that any copy you don't own and control will at some point in the future be revised. This reminds me of the apple 'service' that automatically replaced your MP3s with its own 'sanctioned' digital files. It turned several of my tracks into unlistenable, censored versions and I've been incredibly wary of digital-only content ever since.

MarcoZavala 4y ago
[dead]

causi 4y ago

It's already happened. Netflix and Hulu both removed the episode of Community where someone was cosplaying a dark elf because it looked too much like blackface. Never mind the fact the person doing it is insane, its resemblance to blackface is the joke, and his character dies and is removed from the show after less than a minute of screen time.

willcipriano 4y ago
They also edited out a Bill Nye segment where he said there are two genders. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/bill-nye-the-science-guy-netflix-edit-removed-censored-gender-sex-chromosome-transgenderism-a7716881.html https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/bil... Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
- defrost 4y ago
  Is there an issue with the removal of an actual scientific inaccuracy from a science program? This: > "See, there are only two possibilities: XX, a girl, or XY, a boy. The chance of becoming either a boy or a girl is always 1 in 2, a 50-50 chance either way. It’s like flipping a coin: X you’re a girl, Y you’re a boy.” is out by a few percent .. numbers wise it's more inaccurate than claiming there's no gold in the earths crust. ( see [1] ) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex I imagine Nye himself authorised the change to his own work as I assume he later corrected himself (as appears to be implied in your link).
  - willcipriano 4y ago
    Take a look at the chart you provided "Prevalences of various conditions that have been called intersex" Why does it have a "Sex specificity" column? Why does it contain the words male and female?
    - jackmott42 4y ago
      that column also contains the word "none" in some cases. And in either case it is all just a judgement call people made for the conditions. The semantic sparring over sex and gender has a pretty simple compromise, that people who want to say it is a spectrum and people who want to say it is binary should be able to agree on and be happy with: it is a bimodal distribution of course the problem is that is a nuanced idea and humans can't handle nuance. Maybe you can, and I can, but WE as a human group can't. We prefer to drive ourselves literally insane over the semantic argument. oh well.

pierat 4y ago

I would kindly recommend looking into Jellyfin. It's a FLOSS equivalent of Plex. (And unlike Plex, isn't closed source nagware on 'premium features') But the rest I agree with. And to your point, I just found a trove of rare 'banned' cartoons. Naturally, they're banned primarily for depictions of Japanese (WWII), and of black people in various degrading roles. I do not take enjoyment in watching them. However, due to censorship, these could be lost. And that would be a bigger loss compared to their inherent lack of compassion.

ascagnel_ 4y ago
I would love to move my Plex server to Jellyfin, but it's not yet at feature parity: - PlexAmp is a much, much better tool for consuming music than the Jellyfin UI - Prologue[0] is an app that hooks into your local Plex library to play audiobooks; Jellyfin has no equivalent that I'm aware of - There's a general dearth of iOS and Android apps that support downloads/offline play that sync play progress back to the server
- ranbato 4y ago
  For Android I use YATSE (paid) https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.leetzone.android.yatsewidgetfree https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.leetzone.a...
jstarfish 4y ago
> Naturally, they're banned primarily for depictions of Japanese (WWII), and of black people in various degrading roles. I do not take enjoyment in watching them. However, due to censorship, these could be lost. And that would be a bigger loss compared to their inherent lack of compassion. Why do you feel this is worth preserving? It's designed to evoke positive emotion (laughter) and outrage/hatred about something we don't condone anymore. In addition to being propaganda, outside the context of warmongering, it's toxic. We don't insist on archiving artifacts from smear campaigns between white politicians every election season. But we need to forever archive demeaning racist cartoons? You'd have more of a case defending "Song of the South," which at least has artistic merit. We lose a musical experience with that one. It's the "vampire" problem...immortality is not a good thing. Outdated/bad ideas are supposed to fade with the flow of time, not spread forever for later "research."

macNchz 4y ago

Sometimes these edits can be pretty subtle as well: a while ago my wife and I started watching the original early-90s Beverly Hills 90210 on one of the streaming platforms. It’s a kind of absurd and fun pop-cultural time capsule of a show. After a few episodes, though, I started to realize there was something not quite right. It turns out that much of the music featured in the original airing of the show wasn’t licensed in a way it could be used long term, and over the years it has been replaced with terrible stock songs or jarringly anachronistic choices that sound totally out of place. Entire scenes and episodes have been cut from the seasons distributed on streaming platforms, because they featured live concerts that couldn’t be edited. The original had performances by the Flaming Lips, among many others, that simply can’t be watched now, except if by chance someone copied an old VHS to YouTube. Music was a big part of the original show–in addition to the live shows it featured all sorts of great pop songs from the time, which was part of why it was such a hit with teenagers when it aired. It’s such a bummer they stripped it all out! There are some places online with copies of early DVD releases that have more music, but still not all of it. The original is locked away in a vault somewhere and almost certainly won’t ever be enjoyed in a complete state.

deleted 4y ago
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lazystar 4y ago
This same music licensing issue happened to Charmed as well. The opening credits theme is gone; the guest bands that played at the end of each episode are gone. A ton of late 90s early 2000s culture, just... gone. No one who watches that show today will ever understand why it was enjoyable to those who originally watched it.
- wink 4y ago
  Now I'm really wondering if they cut that from the German dubs, or if I didn't pay attention, or if I simply didn't watch enough episodes, or not in full.
ryathal 4y ago
So many shows are unavailable or different because of ridiculous licensing rules around music. Scrubs has several different versions of music, The Drew Carey Show is basically impossible to find because of music. If Congress wanted to ever do something pro-consumer, passing a law that ends all this nonsense around licensing and require all licensing to be delivery method agnostic. whether a show is premiering, a rerun, syndicated, streamed, or on DVD it should be the same show.

seanalltogether 4y ago

The music in Scrubs is pretty integral to the character of the show, but they had to change many of the songs for streaming, so the only way to watch the show as it was meant to be is from the dvds which will slowly disappear as demand for physical media dries up.

ascagnel_ 4y ago
It's because, before TV on DVD became a major thing in the mid-00s, TV shows would get limited licenses rather than perpetual licenses as a way to keep costs down. Most episodes would air once or twice (its premiere, and a summer re-run), and if a show hit its 100th episode (at which point it became feasible to license it for syndication), the studio would renegotiate music licenses (and some popular shows never entered syndication because of a failure to renegotiate these licenses, while others, like The Wonder Years, entered syndication with radically altered soundtracks). Once TV shows started to release on DVD in a big way, and then digitally a few years later, it became immediately obvious that shows would need longer music licenses, and so the issue has been solved for newer works.

fallat 4y ago

> it is built into the nature of the system I would love to see an elaboration. I think you're saying this because it's in their interest for wide appeal and so will adjust their "products" as necessary to please.

justinator 4y ago

One place this didn't happen was on The Young Ones. Where would we be without The Damned playing Video Nasty, or Motörhead playing Ace of Spades? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2H_7LY5LqM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2H_7LY5LqM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOAz4nPNvLI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOAz4nPNvLI Funnily they had musical guests so that they could sell the show as a variety show, and get the funding to do something so silly.

listenallyall 4y ago

Spielberg is "worried" about it, in part, because he did it himself. In later releases of E.T.: The Exta-Terrestrial, Spielberg edited a crucial scene so that it no longer showed police officers pointing guns at a group of children (among other changes). It's a good sign that he has publicly acknowledged that the edits were a mistake and the original theatrical version of E.T. is available.

nicenewtemp84 4y ago

It's honestly amazing how many of my saved favorites list on YouTube goes missing years later. I know make sure to download any video I want to be able to watch again. Because between creators changing style, getting worried, going away, or getting stricken down by YouTube bots, it seems like anything worth watching won't actually be available to watch 3 years later.

KETpXDDzR 4y ago

A friend of mine recently made that experience. Her Amazon account got stolen, Amazon didn't care, and now she lost access to all movies and books she "owned". Fortunately, with the rise of Z-Library, I was able to recover her books (she already paid for them, so I'm ok with downloading it from such a shady source). I guess we have to fall back to piracy if we want to stay in control.