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 14 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours 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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[–] danielquinn@lemmy.ca 9 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

My girlfriend's dad had hundreds of movies on VHS, pirated from cassettes he'd rented in the past and copied at home by chaining two VCRs together over coaxial cable.

Software was wild pre-internet. My buddy had Windows 95 on 42 3¼" floppies that we copied onto additional sets of 42 floppies that we kept in heavy boxes and then painstakingly installed onto computers belonging to friends and family around the neighbourhood.

I also had a whole bunch of audio cassettes that contained music I dubbed from radio, other cassettes, and later CDs (burning your own was at first, impossible, and later, expensive).

I'm 46.

[–] NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip 3 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

Back in the early 80's we would extract video games from cartridges with a memory dump and then transfer that to the old 5 inch floppies. Then upload them to mostly hidden directories in college bbs and internet systems and then share the location in what was then basically chat rooms and BBS boards.

It would take all night to get a game on a 300 baud modem but it did work.

Its amazing how far back network shares really go.