this post was submitted on 23 May 2026
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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Have you encountered VHS or Cassette piracy in the 80s? (piefed.social)
submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks 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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[–] Banzai51@midwest.social 1 points 2 weeks ago

Friends and I would record off the radio and trade cassettes all the time.

Usually to copy VHS you needed a two VCR setup. My friends and I weren't really into it, but we knew a couple of adults that were, and we suspected they swapped porn mainly.

The other bit of piracy we did was copying and swapping C64 floppy disks. The computer store in town rented C64 games (and other platforms) and the store owner was a family friend of one of my buddies. He'd supply us with the latest hot copy software as it was released, like Copy B, Copy C, and several others I can remember. So of course we rented tons of games and copied them. We became quite the dealers of our small C64 town group. But we never charged anything because it was mainly our friends.