Last June, fans of Comedy Central – the long-running channel behind beloved programmes such as The Daily Show and South Park – received an unwelcome surprise. Paramount Global, Comedy Central’s parent company, unceremoniously purged the vast repository of video content on the channel’s website, which dated back to the late 1990s.
Used to be considered simply prudent to back up the vhs tapes you bought and people were encouraged to tape their favorite shows off the tv. Now some random CEO of the month has the right to bury decades worth of creative works?
Backup vhs tapes? They put copy protections on those too, which made that difficult. In the 90s I had two VCRs, I ran the output of one to the input of the other to record duplicates. Some of the copy protection schemes would fuck with the signal or the tracking.
In the long run, shit like this is theft from the Public Domain.
Yeah, there really should be some expectation of stewardship in exchange for absurd post-Disney copyright durations.