Massive 35mm Leaks on Reddit

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I’m not a lawyer or anything but I highly doubt any major studios care that much. If they wanted to shut us down, there’s nothing stopping them. I don’t think a few scans of old scratchy prints are cutting into their bottom line.

There’s no way Disney isn’t aware of 4k77, and AFAIK they’ve done nothing to stop it being released or shared.

See No Evil said:

If people who are on the fence about contributing to projects, see scans being uploaded freely, they might think “what’s the point in pitching in when I will be able to see it all for free anyway?”. I know that’s not a majority view though, especially here.

I’m one of the people who is contributing to your physical release sets, and the work put into them makes it worth it for me personally. I only got into this from the handful of scans found on archive.org so for me and probably many others here, if it was not for some free scans out there, I would have never got into it in the first place.

There is always going to be a premium in any hobby to get a fuller experience, and even if every single scan I donate to ends up free on the web at some point, someone needed to put cash in to have it exist in the first place. I don’t feel cheated. I’ll still be donating for awhile.

My only concern is that the more public it gets the more the litigators could be notified.

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I’ve downloaded dozens of 35mm film scans. They’re going up on the Archive or VK and OK soon.

People justifying leaking scans don’t care about preservation. They don’t care about more of these scans happening and continuing to happen. They only care about the video file that comes from them. I like releasing the things I scan publically if I can, but there are obvious cases where it can’t happen because of multiple factors that SeeNoEvil listed.

That Reddit and the people leaking downloads are just a bunch of losers who want to steal the credit and the effort that people here and on other forums like StarWarsTrilogy put into making things like this a reality for small dopamine hits seeing people click upvotes. If whoever scanned what they leaked got into serious legal trouble they wouldn’t care and continue stealing and uploading

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In reference to See No Evil and Dr. Cooper’s posts…

I’m somewhat familiar with the discussion here regarding the mass posting of 35mm scans on Reddit having been a member of the Fan Edit subreddit for a couple of years now. I’ve also done my own fan edits for the past decade and belong to many other forums such as this one for fan edits as well as preservation and restoration sites.

I agree with both of you wholeheartedly about the sharing of 35mm scans. Many on Reddit who are sharing these prints don’t understand the damage they are doing to those here who are doing all the work. Others simply don’t care that they are doing damage because they are entitled and selfish to the nth degree. I’ll leave it to you to decide who’s who.

The big problem the people who download these 35mm scans for free with no repercussions is the fact that they don’t have to pay for it so they don’t care. The idea that sharing is caring and the more stuff is shared the more demand there will be for the product is somewhat true from a certain point of view.

The other problem that’s been raised is the erroneous claim and belief that you guys, and others like you, are trying to profit from these prints, which is simply not the case. This is because they have no skin in the game and haven’t had to pay out of their own pockets to fund these projects. They neither understand or don’t care that the money you spend to fund these projects is recouped from donors and that money doesn’t stay in your pocket - it goes right back into making more projects to share with said donors.

That’s the big picture they all miss. It’s a widely held and misconceived notion in those Reddit sub-groups as well as in general that everything should be free, regardless. It’s a ridiculous notion that has no basis in reality.

Right now they download everything for free and share it for free, using Google Drive, MediaFire, and Mega, for example, because they all provide a free amount of storage. But let’s see how generous these same fools would be if tomorrow these storage sites started charging $10 a month for the account plus $10 per Gig of transfer. (Note - I pay for a Mega account that gives me 400 Gig of storage and 2TB of transfer for about $70 so I can trade fan edits). If any of these folks had to pay to share there freely acquired content, the sharing would certainly cease cold.

Another issue I would like to point out here, which I’ve posted about numerous times on Reddit’s Fan Edit group, is that the more content is shared for free, whether fan edits or 35mm scans, the more popular the group becomes and in turn the more attention the group will garner. There’s a reason it took a long time for Napster to be taken down. When only a small group of people were sharing mp3s of songs (at low quality), there was no reason for it to garner any attention. But once it reached critical mass with 320kbps quality and millions of downloads a day, the music studios took notice because sales started to tank.

This same thing will eventually happen with the sharing of fan edits and 35mm scans. It’s not bad enough that certain people are mass posting 35mm scans in one day. You have others who are creating central portals where there’s a one stop shop for download links to thousands of edits. And still others are creating websites of their own to share their dozens of projects, while others are creating streaming channels on Discord to do the same thing for mass consumption.

It’s simply getting out of hand now. I believe it’s just a matter of time before it all reaches critical mass. There’s a reason places like originaltrilogy.com and the IFDB have strict rules about no asking for download links and no posting of direct links to content. It’s for the legal protection of the website/group/community as well as to keep under the radar of the studios.

Anyway, I just wanted to share my two cents. Take it for what it’s worth…

In a couple of days I’ll upload The Lion King 35mm to the Internet Archive and various other preservation sites. Others to follow.

In addition to that, maybe post a couple of 2 or 3 minute clips in the comments section of Disney’s official Twitter. When the inevitable “Where’d you get that?” comments roll in, I’ll just let’em know.

CleeteRonson said:

In a couple of days I’ll upload The Lion King 35mm to the Internet Archive and various other preservation sites. Others to follow.

In addition to that, maybe post a couple of 2 or 3 minute clips in the comments section of Disney’s official Twitter. When the inevitable “Where’d you get that?” comments roll in, I’ll just let’em know.

No scans are being “sold”. Sometimes optional donations are set up because it takes a lot of money, time and resources to create these projects. The folks restoring these scans have homes they need to pay for, families they need to provide for, etc. etc. and film reels, and especially the equipment used to scan and edit them, are not cheap by any means. No one is forcing you to pay, but that option is there for the community to give back to the individuals who donated their own time and money into these projects.

Not to mention, you or any of us here are not entitled to these preservations. If you want to watch a specific movie, guess what? They’re almost all available officially on physical media and/or streaming. Scanning and preserving film prints is extremely niche, and we’re damn lucky that there are people out there who want to work on these preservations in the first place, especially with copyright obviously being a huge concern. Having access to these theatrical film prints is not a right, it is a privilege; one we should not take for granted.

You start doing dumb, childish crap like you mentioned in your comment, and suddenly these preservations will stop being created. And then nobody will be able to enjoy them.

No legitimate preservationist is interested in making a quick buck, or something as silly as clout. Scans aren’t kept private because we “want to feel cool” or whatever other nonsense you heard on Reddit. It’s to keep communities like this from being DMCA’d.

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As someone who lurks the FanEdits subreddits I just wanted to thank you for clarifying the problem with sharing the 35mm files. This thread gave me a better understanding of the potential problems with that.

On the argument of people contributing to these projects; where do such things happen? How do I know what is planned to be scanned and how/where can I contribute?

DigMod said:

Lately we’ve started to notice an uptick in 35mm prints. I just got back from a very extended vacation and see that it has caused a major concern… All 35mm print posts have been removed from the subreddit while the mod team reviews and seeks to better understand the situation. I’ll be reading over this thread and most likely posting follow up questions.

I think honestly it’s probably for the best if they never come back. Not for any of the reasoning that’s been cited previously, some of which is better than others, but because your sub is supposed to be about fanedits and nothing being posted even remotely resembles a fanedit. It’s just straight up piracy, full-stop.

Granted, ALL of this is (and it’s a thing places like this have historically tried to soft-shoe around) full-blown piracy. It’s well-meaning, super-niche, extensive, complicated, caring, careful piracy, but there isn’t any real question of ownership and copyright that isn’t pretty clearly answered by “you’re not supposed to be doing this, because none of this stuff is yours.” The people who scan this stuff know it, the people who upload this stuff to long-calcified private trackers know it, the people who keep a healthy ratio sharing it know it, everyone knows. It’s largely harmless piracy (MOST piracy is, fun fact, but that’s a whole 'nother topic) but it’s still technically illegal activity.

Now: everyone seems to - after almost 30 years now of people talking about and distributing stuff through and around here - have FINALLY realized the tiny piracy niche this place (and the communities orbiting it) occupies isn’t hurting the major studios, and the studios have largely decided since we’re not trying to hurt them, or undercut them, that they’ll leave us all alone.

But so far as a subreddit about fanedits is concerned: I don’t see how someone kicking open the door to myspleen and storing every film scan it’s ever had uploaded to it has anything to do with fanediting. It was off-topic spamming in the first place.