[sytelus]

This is complete incompetence from their leadership who show no value to their own content. They could have easily auctioned off/sold very old content to someone else but that kind of thinking would be beyond their competency. It's no wonder they go in such huge losses despite of having loyal audience and monopoly over unparalleled content. To this day I cannot get over the fact that there are literally millions documentaries out there made with a lot of love and hard work but only available through DVD or mailing in a check to some dude. Similarly, lot of my favorite music albums are still on cassette tapes and never digitized online by their creators. Fortunately, audience did digitized them nicely and uploaded over to torrents and that's the only way to get them today. Same goes of out of print books and magazines. The producers of this content could have easily digitized it and uploaded over to some marketplace and made at least free coffee money for rest of their lives but surprisingly they just never get around doing it. IMO, it just expresses complete naivety and disregard to importance of their own content. They sure spent days and months of blood and sweat but can't get around to do a last mile of uploading files.

There is a huge startup opportunity here for folks who are willing to chase these content and do the last mile on their behalf.

[onion2k]

They could have easily auctioned off/sold very old content to someone else..

That assumes they own the exclusive rights to the content. A lot of media has many rights holders (writers, music, etc), and you need to get them all to agree a sale or waive their right in order to sell. That could be expensive because it's involve lots and lots of lawyers. For a bunch of old comedy clips it might not make any commercial sense.

[bandrami]

This sounds like regulatory failure creating a deadweight loss. IP rights were invented to further the creation and distribution of works in the arts and sciences; if they're making it prohibitively difficult we're doing it wrong.

[Y_Y]

If the copyright system were changed so that rightsholders were guaranteed to get paid, but didn't have veto over publication, how bad would that be? The reasons people usually justify copyright protection usually centre on rewarding the creators, and I think the right to stop people seeing your work is a harder sell.

There is of course a new question of how to set the price, but you could e.g. have an auction of some kind where the highest bid must be accepted.

(There are certainly notable cases like Mein Kampf where copyright has been conspicuously used to prevent further distribution.)

[djantje]

But is this content available somewhere else then? Should it not have been archived then or given to those who hold those rights so they could publish?

[pyuser583]

Comedy is especially problematic. You have a standup show with lots of comedians and a band. Just imagine the IP interests.

[prirun]

> They sure spent days and months of blood and sweat but can't get around to do a last mile of uploading files.

The people making these decisions didn't spend any time, blood, or sweat on producing this content. That's why it's so easy for them to discard it: they're only concerned with making (big) money, not figuring out how they can preserve content without incurring a loss. Which, IMO, should be the goal for older, historical content.

I'm pretty sure the money we're paying countries for wars would cover historical content preservation costs a gazillion times over.

[dotancohen]

  > lot of my favorite music albums are still on cassette tapes and never digitized online by their creators.

Or worse. Rust In Peace was completely rerecorded by studio musicians and that's what you get if you look for it on Spotify or even buy a new CD today! To actually hear the album as recorded originally, you need to find a thirty-year old disc and just deal with the scratches.

[lapcat]

> Rust In Peace was completely rerecorded by studio musicians

Are you talking about the 1990 Megadeth album?

In 2004 it was remastered, as a lot of albums are, but it was not rerecorded by studio musicians.

[whoknowsidont]

> This is complete incompetence from their leadership who show no value to their own content

Have you not seen the U.S.? It doesn't matter. The system is orchestrated to existing money-people making money simply for having it in the first place.

Even "bankruptcy" doesn't mean anything anymore.

Your interest or legitimate use cases do. not matter. At all. Ever. For entertainment or technology.

[robertlagrant]

The US has the most millionaires, and creates them the fastest[0].

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2019/10/22/the-co...

[samspot]

They can still sell it. We shouldn't assume because the webservers were shut down that everything is deleted and gone. When the article says it's "gone" they mean it is no longer available to the public.

[bdjsiqoocwk]

Torrents.

[nicolas_t]

What proofs do you have that he is doing that? I mean I'm not him and my first instinct if I saw your previous comment "What are you even talking about. When is the last time you went to comedycentral.com to watch something... This is giant self-righteous paragraph of junk." would be to downvote it.

I'd downvote it because of "self-righteous paragraph of junk." and because I strongly believe that historical content should be maintained.

[vasco]

Account from 2023 accusing account from 2007. Mmmm.

[dtech]

I also haven't gone to a library recently to read the Iliad, that doesn't mean I'm ok with all copies being burned.

[karlgkk]

That’s kind of the point though isn’t it? Why not just put this on Paramount+ or gate that through Paramount+?

They have tons of content, why not make it available? Because it’s difficult, and they don’t see the value prop, even even though there may be one.

[vincnetas]

They're not deleting that content. They just moving it to paramount+ subscription service.

[rsanek]

third paragraph of the article

> Unfortunately for those in search of older episodes of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, neither can be found on Paramount+.

[bandrami]

Unfortunately most of their properties aren't on Paramount+