Have you encountered VHS or Cassette piracy in the 80s? (piefed.social)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by Shadow79@piefed.social to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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Like that infamous "ET" torrent in 1982 where it involved a "pirate" sneaking a huge JVC camcorder (with a VHS reel) recording the entire movie in theaters, given this was before DVD's existed (don't even ask about pirate bay, those weren't available yet). The same applies to "torrented" music, one would have a spare tape cassette recording the song played via the radio, that's how they torrented content back then if they can't afford an official copy.

Only millennials or Gen X who were kids back then would've encountered or witnessed VHS or Cassette "torrents" from either friends or family and often or not, piracy in the pre internet days was rife even before torrent sites were a thing. There are VHS "torrents" of TV shows or series (placing a camcorder which faces the TV screen with a spare reel recording the entire show (ads included), then used to fast forward upon replay.

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[-] LastYearsIrritant@sopuli.xyz 17 points 1 week ago

Naw dude, we walked down the street and I copied a few minutes of the movie from each of my friends over the course of a couple months. It took about an hour to find the exact part to start at to make sure there were no hiccups in the recording, but by then we only had a couple minutes to copy what was next before dinner was ready.

Then the next day we'd set it all up at another friend's house and do it again.

[-] dracc@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 1 week ago

Upvote for the silly joke. 😄

this post was submitted on 23 May 2026

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