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.
Wowza. “Torrent” being synonymous with “warez” was not on my 2026 bingo card.
Ddit: maybe just “copy” was the word it was replacing? Unexpected either way IMO.
I dunno, I think this is just an OP thing?
To me, something has to be shared over a computer network using the bittorrent protocol to be ‘torrented’.
You’d never say sharing something with Napster or limewire was ‘torrenting’.
i completely agree. its just the wrong term. when op said “et torrent recorded in the theater” i assumed someone digitized an old pirate vhs and put it up on torrent.
but this may just be like the term “vhs player” where the kids these days have no reason to care that it was called a vcr.
also i could be wrong, but i always understood warez the be more a software thing, and not just any media.
Strictly speaking,a VCR is a video cassette recorder. If it doesn’t have recording capability, it’s just a player.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen one that couldn’t record, though.
I had some friends who would go on holiday and come back with VHS tapes with badly photocopied covers. The films were really bad quality as well. I was too young to understand what piracy was so I just thought that really bad videos were normal in the country to which they were going.
And you were right!
