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Which occasionally has unexpected consequences.

The licensing of the music on certain movies didn't anticipate the internet. And the studios never came to an agreement. As a result you can buy DVDs of movies like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Fair_Lady and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullets_Over_Broadway, but you can't rent them off of any streaming service. Given that most of us no longer have DVD players, they seem destined to only survive in pirated copies. If that.




For that matter, the licensing of the music on certain TV series didn't anticipate DVDs. Northern Exposure and WKRP in Cincinnati were missing a lot of the original music on the DVDs--although this is apparently partly corrected in the newer complete series releases.


Similarly, Beavis and Butthead has never had a release that mirrors the broadcast because of the music videos.


This shit is the entire reason I bother with piracy at all. I very, super-duper much don't want to maintain a media server, but I do want several things in their full, original versions (Beavis and Butthead is one, in fact, but there are several), or that flat-out can't be had otherwise, or whatever, and as long as I'm having to maintain the server anyway....

If they (all these companies) ever fully sort out audio rights, start providing great-quality copies of movies without screwing with them (the 4k77 and related projects are far and away the highest-quality copies of the original, unmolested Star Wars trilogy available, period, for any price, and they're entirely a very-expensive-to-produce volunteer fan-made effort, available for free! WTF?), stop cutting episodes, and stop revoking access to things, I can finally scrap that stupid server. It's 1000% not worth the cost and effort just to avoid paying for the things I watch. Buuuuut if I'm maintaining it anyway, for other reasons, well, that's another matter.


There's been countless cases where pirates, err, I mean "digital archivists", have preserved things for posterity that would otherwise be lost today.

I actually see piracy as a moral imperative. Without it, we would not be able to properly preserve culture.


Ah this is why I can never find Wayne's World hilarious review of November Rain MTV video by Gun'n'Roses. :-(


Yes, the high profile examples can get fixed.

But the second tier ones don't. There isn't so much money to be made from fixing them, nor is there the public pressure. So they languish..indefinitely.


Same shit happened with GTA, on Steam for example. Lots of music pulled retroactively with an update, because licenses expired.



If so, then that is new and welcome.

A couple of years ago it wasn't true. I know because I tried to watch both and not a single streaming service, including Amazon, had it.


And some game publishers apparently don't anticipate the passing of time (or simply don't care). Multiple games have already been removed from Steam because some licenses for in-game content expired.




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