#piracy is only reason some cartoons aren't lost media

[zehecatl]

genuinely one of the stupidest take i've ever laid my eyes on, and OP is rightfully getting dragged through every circle of hell for it, but it's just

The Owl House wasn't on Disney+ where i live until after it was cancelled. Lego Monkie Kid didn't get put on HBO until it was in its fourth season, and it still doesn't have danish (or english) subtitles. i've been trying to find the LMK lego sets in stores since before the second season aired, and i have yet to find a single one. outside of a possible Hot Topic t-shirt (which! i have never seen a store of! btw) merch just frankly don't exist anymore. DVDs and blue-rays barely exist anymore either, and if they do it's because the fandom fucking begged for it

and that's not to mention the fact that anyone not in america will have an even harder time accessing any of it, especially if they'd like english subtitles, or just want the original language track

like i can't buy the Moominvalley DVDs in our stores, because there's no english subtitles, and my brain hates the dissonance

but yeah it's definitely the fans fault, sure

[tymime]

I'm very alarmed by how many people are dismissive of the lost media community, even going so far as to spread misinformation about them. I've seen them characterize lost media seekers as ignorant whiners and brats, and that they're wasting their efforts. Do these people have any idea how difficult it actually is to find this stuff? It can take years, if copies even exist. Don't they value art preservation?

You'd be astonished by how many shows that are barely twenty years old that have simply vanished, with no clear indication of whether or not the copyright holders kept a record of it. When fans try to contact the people involved in the show, they often refuse to answer emails. These aren't old, aging shows from fifty years ago, decaying in some film can. These are shows from as recent as the 2000s and 2010s.

There's been a toxic attitude going around big media companies for a couple decades now, treating their IPs (and their customers) as disposable, moving on to the next thing as soon as profits dry up. This is a big part of the reason media becomes lost in the first place. Old show not getting enough ratings? Need to make room for a new show? Just get rid of it! Now, some of these examples aren't lost media, admittedly- but they definitely could have been, if not for an on-the-ball internet pirate downloading and backing them up. There's a series from 2002 called Whatever Happened to... Robot Jones? which hasn't been on the air in about twenty years. The original audio track was missing for many years, and had to be pieced together from several sources, with the video elements coming from a foreign dub. There was a music track heard in an episode of SpongeBob called "Humpback Hop" with several minutes cut from it, unheard of for two decades, and even the composer had lost all of his copies of it. It seemed like even Nickelodeon didn't have it in their archives, because they rerecorded it for a DVD menu. It's a miracle somebody finally tracked it down. There's a series from 2007 called Out of Jimmy's Head, whose original English version is still half missing. Even though by all accounts it's a crappy show, I still want to see it. (update: This show has been found, thank goodness.) And even though I'm not a fan, there are dozens of 2010s Cartoon Network shows that were once on HBO Max, that are simply gone. They're not in reruns, they're not officially streaming. You have to resort to piracy to view them. I wouldn't wish this fate on anybody. The Willow series from 2022 was taken off Disney+ mere weeks after its debut, just because not enough people watched it. It's stuck in the middle of a storyline.

Nintendo has been notoriously bad about this. They don't want you to play any NES, SNES, GB, or N64 games that aren't the most iconic best-sellers. They take down ROM websites, even if most of the games there aren't first party or being sold in any way. The only way to legally play a game that isn't available on the Switch is to pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars for a working console and cartridges. Most people can't afford to do that.

If it hadn't been for the efforts of unofficial programs like Ruffle and Flashpoint, thousands of flash games and cartoons would be unplayable and unwatchable.

Even if the cartoon is safe and sound locked away in some vault, instead of missing entirely, it still winds up unseen that way. The public has a right to see a show they used to be able to see and enjoyed, instead of it being unviewable for all eternity. "Oh, but they have a right to not let us see it! They own the rights to it, after all, and can do whatever they want!" some might say. What if WB went out of their way to destroy every DVD, Blu-ray, and video tape of Looney Tunes, and locked away all their copies? Would you feel the same way then? Would we not have a right to see them? Would you just roll over and take it, and let corporate overlords tell what you can or can't watch? Just shrug it off and say "Oh well, guess I'll never see it again"? How would it not irritate you? TV and movies aren't the same as some painting or statue where usually only one version of it exists in some museum or private collection. Media is meant to be distributed and seen worldwide, for everyone to enjoy in their homes. If they're stuck in some warehouse on some hard drive, they may as well not exist.

It extends out into other aspects of our lives- old buildings get torn down instead of getting restored, vintage interiors get torn out or covered up by something modern or ugly. There was a time when films and video tapes were routinely destroyed to make room for new ones, because nobody thought anybody would want to see them again. We need to get past this destructive pattern.

Am I grateful for streaming services and the content they make available? Of course I am. But as many have said before, they could take it all away, and a show can simply vanish, leaving fans to resort to piracy just to see it, if anyone even bothered to save it beforehand.

Being dismissive of these efforts is the sort of attitude that's part of the reason media gets lost in the first place.