BBC Relies on ‘Pirate’ Audio To Bring Back Lost TV Show
Written by enigmax on December 14, 2008Back in the 60’s, archive space at the BBC was hard to come by, forcing the broadcaster to delete some of its own material. Now, a TV show that fell victim to this regime has been resurrected, with the BBC using a pirate recording of the show’s audio to bring it back to life.
In these Internet and file-sharing times, it seems unthinkable that we could ever be in the position of any media becoming ‘rare’ again. No matter where material appears, it always seems to end up on the Internet and, once there, it is copied time and time again to every corner of the globe. Losing a movie, song or TV show forever should be a thing of the past - but it hasn’t always been that way.
With today’s compression and hard drive technology, we can store hundreds of movies in a very small space indeed, but before the mainstream uptake of digital technology, storing video or music was a very expensive and resource-hungry task. Recent news from the BBC gives us a taster of how difficult things had become for them in the 1960’s, with the public broadcaster finding itself squeezed by lack of funds and lack of storage space, and even having to resort to erasing TV shows it had previously made.
One such TV show that suffered was Dad’s Army, a sitcom about the Home Guard in World War 2. The series ran for a huge 80 episodes on TV and made further appearances on radio, film and stage. The show pulled in 18 million viewers an episode during the 1970’s and still appears on TV today. Last night a very special episode aired on the BBC.
Room at the Bottom, an episode presumed lost by the BBC when it was erased to save space and money over thirty years ago, appeared on TV last night. The original show was in black and white (the color version was erased, along with the audio) but experts recreated the color version from the black and white source. But what about the lost audio?
Ed Doolan MBE is a presenter on BBC Radio WM, but back in 1969 before he worked for the BBC, he was a very naughty boy. Using a reel-to-reel tape recorder, Doolan recorded many shows, including the audio from the ‘lost’ episode when it first aired, and has kept the recording ever since. Today, far from hauling him over the coals, the BBC has used Doolan’s illicit copy to help bring the show back to life.
Last night, millions of Dad’s Army fans enjoyed the ‘lost’ episode of their beloved show and you can bet that not a single one would be calling for Doolan to be sued. In the end, the ‘good’ in his piracy leads to enjoyment for millions, and that can never be a bad thing.
It’s only when we lose something that we truly appreciate its full value and, thanks to file-sharing and the Internet, we are now in the enviable position of never having to apply the words ‘rare’ or ‘lost’ to any media ever again. And even though companies want to make media less accessible with their DRM, in the longer term, no-one will thank them for locking away history.
Previously: Canada Increases ‘Music Industry Subsidy’ on Blank CDs
Next: Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent
51 Responses
Even big business use bit torrent , it should be made legal and main stream
Off with his head! I’m gonna sue him for $50M because I could have sold a $25 DVD to every person who saw the show!
Gotta love unequal enforcement of the law. (”Good criminals” should be praised; “bad criminals” should be hung.)
BitTorrent IS legal and mainstream, it’s the sharing of copyrighted works that isn’t legal.
Good for this guy. He did something for himself, presumably illegal, and millions enjoyed it because of the company itself. That right there should be the end-all-be-all of every single BT case in the book. When one company uses pirated media for itself, even if the material is their own, it’s all over.
w00t! Pirate saves history!
^^^^^^^
tell that to the MPAA, the RIAA and their mafioso counterparts.
bittorrent is cooool.
I don’t see how you can claim this is piracy. Making home recordings of broadcasts for personal use has been legal for a long time. Seriously, you wouldn’t call someone who’s recorded TV using Betamax, VHS, and other more recent recording equipment, pirates. What Ed Doolan did using reel-to-reel doesn’t seem to be any different, aside from the technology used.
@#6: The MPAA does (or did). Remember former MPAA prez. Jack Valenti’s comments equating the VCR with the Boston Strangler?
And to them it doesn’t matter if you’re recording it for place or time shifting, both of which are considered fair use. To the MAFIAA, there is no such thing as fair use.
I grew up watching dads army with my dad and now im 17 im pirating every day and I must say this story really does make me smile :-) pity about all the episodes the beep had to delete tho.
BBC puts you in your place. Fuck BitTorrent.Reel-reel is where its’s at.
lots of previously lost bbc radio shows have been returned to the archives (and broadcast on bbc7) by people who recorded them at home. several lost james follett plays had been circulating on usenet for years before someone thought to send him a copy of them.
btw, if anyone thinks the bbc taping over things came to an end in the 70s, they still have a lot of radio shows broadcast as late as the 90s that are either partially or completely missing.
ya and i have the 1regeneration of doc who and man i wish piracy was aorund cause tons a eps are wrecked and reconstructed audio with still photos
ya see the bbc had a fire and also diliberately destroyed some stuff.
Ya they didnt realize the show is erally the longest sci fi OF all time and that should have merited storage
A lot of peter cook and Dudley Moore stuff was lost due to it being deleted by the BBC, such a pity.
Shows and videos are still destroyed today, especially kids shows and cartoons.
#13
So that’s why I can’t find anything about the “Hurricanes”, execpt the intro?
“Hurricanes” was my favourite cartoon! Can anyone tell me where I can find some of the shows about the great soccer team?
Does this mean if the BBC sells this episode of Dads Army on DVD it would be illegal. Because the audio was pirated. If i’m not mistaken the episode would have to be available for free because of the audio.
PS:
I hope Torrentfreak keeps an eye on this one. Just to see if this episode is ever sold and report back to us.
“Making home recordings of broadcasts for personal use has been legal for a long time. ”
Fun fact: the only difference between recording a TV show with a VCR and downloading a TV show off BitTorrent is that the MPAA’s bitter campaign to ban home video recording ended in complete failure.
Whereas with BitTorrent, the MPAA’s bitter campaign to ban filesharing is in the process of ending in complete failure.
@15 No as it was their content to start with. The guy just made backups :D That and the Beeb are an evolutionary force in media. They’re not out to make millions from shit.
Nice propaganda but this has nothing to do with BitTorrent, P2P or file-sharing.
This is great to hear about, some one shared the audio so the video could be resurrected & aired again, so then it could be recorded again & shared on BT!
Excellent…
Many of the early episodes of Doctor Who were lost due to the BBC erasing the tapes.
18 Dec 15, 2008 at 00:23 by Anonymous
“Nice propaganda but this has nothing to do with BitTorrent, P2P or file-sharing.”
=-=-=-=-=
If it has anything to do with IP and copyright, then yes, it does.
Whether this is piracy is questionable. In the 60’s they never had the current rules regarding home recording for personal use, which is not piracy and is not illegal. It probably wasn’t piracy in the 60’s either, unless he was making copies and selling them to his friends.
@16, your “Fun Fact” is bullshit. When you record a tv show be it with a VCR, DVDR or PVR, whatever, you alone are making that copy for your personal use, which is perfectly legal. When you use bittorrent to download, you are getting it from someone who has no legal right to give it to you, you have no legal right to download it, and you have no legal right to distribute it to others. Thats exactly the same as you making your recording, then making 1000 different copies and giving them away to total strangers, which would be illegal.
stfu: “@16, your “Fun Fact” is bullshit. When you record a tv show be it with a VCR, DVDR or PVR, whatever, you alone are making that copy for your personal use, which is perfectly legal. When you use bittorrent to download, you are getting it from someone who has no legal right to give it to you, you have no legal right to download it, and you have no legal right to distribute it to others. Thats exactly the same as you making your recording, then making 1000 different copies and giving them away to total strangers, which would be illegal.”
Hahahah.
You’re kind of an idiot, aren’t you?
The point of the analogy Mr. Missing-The-Forest-For-The-Trees, is that in terms of harming the television industry, downloading some TV show off of BitTorrent is no different from recording it off the air with a VCR.
Oh, and the point was also that the MPAA’s crusade against filesharing is just a rehash of its crusade against home video recording, which in turn was just a rehash of the RIAA’s crusade against audio cassette recording.
FYI, saying that filesharing is different from videotaping/DVR’ing a show because you can share a downloaded episode with thousands of other people is just laughable, because tens of millions of people own some kind of home recording equipment. So then, what’s the difference between sharing an episode of Heroes with a million other people through P2P, and a million people simply recording it at home on their VCR/DVR?
Just a bunch of meaningless, hypocritical legal bullshit that isn’t worth paying attenton to.
Very good article. That’s the reason I love this website.
Some Doctor Who episodes now exist only as reconstructions by fans who recorded the audio and shared it decades later with others who saved cutting room scraps.
Yes, we only appreciate the value of something when it is gone, and piracy brings shows to millions of people so it is never “rare”. But because so many people have access to it, it’s value goes down meaning fewer people are willing to pay for it. This isn’t piracies problem though, the publishers need to increase the value of their content, they need to give us better quality, better extras and charge us less for it. Or else they need to make it very readily available in great quality and make it so cheap and easy and portable that we wouldn’t mind paying for it. They need to make a system that is better than the current piracy in video and audio quality, and they need to make a very cheap subscription service (like 10 dollars per month) so that EVERYONE will use it.
It’s a pipe dream though, the studios and publishers are too stupid to get with the times, even if it is for their own good.
pirates are some of the best archivists
@23 : “You’re kind of an idiot, aren’t you?
FYI, saying that filesharing is different from videotaping/DVR’ing a show because you can share a downloaded episode with thousands of other people is just laughable, because tens of millions of people own some kind of home recording equipment. So then, what’s the difference between sharing an episode of Heroes with a million other people through P2P, and a million people simply recording it at home on their VCR/DVR?”
Wow, you really are a fucking moron arent you… ROFL that you called the other poster an idiot and then posted that horseshit.
Classic. :D
I won’t argue with your points because you obviously have your head so far up your own arse that you believe making vague analogies between two completely seperate processes makes them the same process.
Some people are just too thick.
“Using a reel-to-reel tape recorder, Doolan recorded many shows, including the audio from the ‘lost’ episode when it first aired, and has kept the recording ever since.”
Is there something missing here? Like… that the audio was on tape? I wanna see the bittorrent program that writes to tape! =D
There are some old Doctor Who episodes that also fell victim to the BBC junking policy. The pirates recorded the audio of those too, and some of them have been animated and set to their original sound thanks to the pirates. I don’t think the BBC minds these folks as much as their American counterparts.
“The point of the analogy Mr. Missing-The-Forest-For-The-Trees, is that in terms of harming the television industry, downloading some TV show off of BitTorrent is no different from recording it off the air with a VCR.”
Hmmm… the BBC is funded by UK Taxpayers. It’s not your typical corner of the television industry, so your analogy is flawed.
“thanks to file-sharing and the Internet, we are now in the enviable position of never having to apply the words ‘rare’ or ‘lost’ to any media ever again”
Famous last words. ;-)
What do you mean “even big businesses uses torrents”, the BBC is owned by the government!!
#6 - why not the movie companies tried to say that VHS etc was illegal…
All day reading this, and im seriously considering moving to a non-extradition country and knocking myself out with seeding. *sigh* now to convince my GF haha.
#23
Wouldnt you agree that recording the video stream, and downloading the video stream are both a very fine line to be walking in an argumentative stance?
Surely even you can see that the tv broadcasting is a form of streaming, which when you look at it, is so close to any other form of transmission that they both blur the lines?
You obviously have the intelligence to understand reasonable argument, by your reply, so you should understand - and agree - that while the broadcaster may release an object once, via a single frequency, that it does not always necessarily equate to how everyone receives it.
I have had to in many places re-broadcast television/radio transmissions (i work in many remote places, and not all the time in direct line of site to many transmission methods).
Does that mean that if i re-broadcast(or bounce) a signal - even if its relayed almost instantly - into a rather deep valley, that im illegally ripping the stream?
If thats true, how do the broadcasters not violate their own rules when they re-broadcast, or even when subsidiary companies re-broadcast their signals - with their own advertisements in them - without being counted as illegal transfers?
If, on the other hand, you agree its not illegal, then where is the difference in file sharing? You are talking about something shared over a publicly available medium, and re-shared later(which is the same thing as i was doing, al-bet at a longer delay in seeing it, but so is VHS recording - which was never ruled illegal).
If you want to keep up a logical discussion, im perfectly willing to keep checking here as often as i can - and im also willing to change my point of view for decent arguments - if you are.
- Marak Cook
“Lets hope the free never be cowed by the weak, for when that happens, all hope is lost in life.”.
@ 18.
Um yes it does moron, re-read. Then hit yourself in the face.
Idiot.
@26 LaughingG3uest
There is a flaw in that system. It is that the big industry still controls what is available, and it is very important for people to upload what they want at will, since it allows for anybody to create their own works at will, and then share it with people at will. Any system of centralized “pay to get” is not very good for such indie works which do not go through a major label. The fact is that when there is a central entity to pay for everything, this central entity controls everything - and they should not be the ones controlling what is available, because people should be able to share what they want at will - whether it be other people’s works, or their own works (without major labels “authorizing” it).
Roze
http://www.10ch.org/
This is blatantly home recording, not piracy. No-one didn’t buy the DVD because this guy was running a group sharing it out. No cameramen lost their jobs because the BBC wasn’t making any money of this one guy.
Yes, there are valid arguments for voluntary donation from rather than charging for shows, but this is a terrible argument for torrenting being legal.
@Anonymous “The point of the analogy Mr. Missing-The-Forest-For-The-Trees, is that in terms of harming the television industry, downloading some TV show off of BitTorrent is no different from recording it off the air with a VCR.”
No, because you record the paid ads with the show. So you’re still exposed to the advertising. And in the case of the BBC, you still have to pay a TV licence. So actually, the people who make the show still get paid. Which is the final measure of a working system.
As long as the people making the product get paid for the work they do, nothing else should matter.
ghj
36 (lol): Thanks but no thanks, I don’t want to end up as brain-dead as you are.
Regarding the comments of others and some retarded responses: Pointing out that something is de facto illegal by law, doesn’t mean the person pointing this out agrees with these laws. Some people here are too trigger-happy to drop all logic and little bit of brains left just to get their damn files for free. A true pirate is like a gentleman: He enjoys and keeps his mouth shut.
Nice comeback #41.. lol
When your owned, your owned, dont try to make up excuses and pathetic comebacks.
Stfu and hit yourself in the face again for being as weak as you are.
What exactly DO you think is about P2P or bittorrent? Have you not realized yet that this site offers a little more content on whats going on around the world? Are you really that close minded?
The content here obviously doesn’t meet your requirements.. so guess what the next move is dumbass? See that X in the top right of the screen?
Anonymous muppet: “I won’t argue with your points because you obviously have your head so far up your own arse that you believe making vague analogies between two completely seperate processes makes them the same process.”
Actually, you won’t argue with my point because you can’t argue with my point.
Logic 1, you 0.
But since I’m not above laughing at mongoloids; thanks for the comedy. :D
Simon:“Hmmm… the BBC is funded by UK Taxpayers. It’s not your typical corner of the television industry, so your analogy is flawed.”
The analogy wasn’t about the BBC specifically, but the television industry in general.
Marak: “Wouldnt you agree that recording the video stream, and downloading the video stream are both a very fine line to be walking in an argumentative stance?”
I’d say recording the videostream and downloading the videostream are both the same thing, for all intents and purposes, and that it’s absurd for filesharing a TV show to be illegal when recording it on a VCR isn’t.
So… Uh… I’m not sure where we’re disagreeing? Heh.
Tom: “No, because you record the paid ads with the show. So you’re still exposed to the advertising.”
I edit out the paid ads, as do alot of others. Also, some DVRs cut out the ads automatically. Remember when the MPAA tried to sue Tivo? And what about when people record a movie from some cable station that shows them without any commercial inturruptions?
That, and the fact that being exposed to an ad doesn’t mean somebody is going to just rush out and buy something. The only difference between watching an episode of something and ignoring the commercials, and downloading an ad-free episode of something off P2P, is that in the latter case I won’t be annoyed by pointless commercials for things I’m never going to buy, or for things I already buy anyway.
Anon: “I’d say recording the videostream and downloading the videostream are both the same thing, for all intents and purposes, and that it’s absurd for filesharing a TV show to be illegal when recording it on a VCR isn’t.”
And thats why you fail miserably. How dumb do u have to be to not know the difference.
So what i think yucko is trying to say is, that recording the video stream is ok cause ur getting it directly from a legal source, where as downloading the videostream is “not legal” cause ur dowloading it off other “pirates” who have made an unauthorized copy of it and are distributing it for free…
42 (yeaah), you didn’t have to prove that your skull is full of shit. I knew that after your first garbage statement. Now crawl back into that daemon womb you fell from and shut your ugly trap before you get hurt.
The same thing happened to the earliest tv shows during the 50’s in the US. They were short on tape due to budgets, so they had to record over older shows already broadcasted!
yucko: “And thats why you fail miserably. How dumb do u have to be to not know the difference.”
What’s this? Yet another mongoloid backing up the filesharing = VCR analogy by demonstrating it cannot be argued with?
Why thanks, you shouldn’t have. :)
Lost Rules. Hey, to make some very good money online, check out
www dot thespidersystem dot ws
If you really think that copying something you are watching to re-watch it privately is exactely like Copying something to distribute to a million-odd other persons who haven’t watched the said content, then you should really apply for a disability check.
BTW, I pirate, a lot, but I don’t really care or try to justify my actions with inane arguments. I simply grab things online and that is all.
@#49
It’s not about the Lost series,
RTFA ffs
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