Say Yes To VHS, Ep 2: Stop - Pirates, Police and Paramilitaries

In the second episode of Say Yes to VHS, Brian and Sam discuss the rise of pirate and counterfeit video and how the police and other authority figures tried to stop the illegal VHS market.

As early as 1978, copies of Saturday Night Fever were shown in hotels, pubs and clubs across Northern Ireland. But once the authorities clamped down on these screenings, pirate videos were widely consumed at home. E.T. the Extra Terrestrial was the pirate hit of 1982, with pirate copies available to buy for £5 several months before the film was released in cinemas. In the following year, the Royal Ulster Constabulary seized up to 35,000 videos in the biggest raid of its type in the United Kingdom. Fines and prison sentences followed, but did not stop the problem as these videos were highly profitable and easy to copy on an industrial scale. Piracy was common everywhere, but it took on a different hue in Northern Ireland as paramilitaries got in on the act. VHS piracy continued well into the 1990s, when pirate copies of The Lion King were widely available to purchase from illegitimate dealers.

Links

The Northern Ireland Screen Digital Film Archive, '80s Tech!' collection

Counterpoint: Video Pirates

Written and presented by Dr Sam Manning and Brian Henry Martin
Music by Score Draw Music
https://thewondercinema.buzzsprout.com

Chapters

• 0:44 Why was the video revolution a piracy boom in Northern Ireland?
• 3:43 Was Saturday Night Fever the first pirate video in 1978?
• 5:45 How profitable was it for the video pirates?
• 8:28 How ET the pirate video in 1982 changed everything.
• 14:23 The morality of watching pirate videos in the 1980s
• 16:30 How did the police crackdown on the piracy boom?
• 23:29 Did the crackdown solve the problem by the 1990s?
• 25:30 How the DNA of VHS is to copy, so are we all pirates?

Transcript

Welcome to the Wonder Cinema Podcast. 

where we wonder about cinema. 

I'm filmmaker and film critic Brian Henry Martin. 

and I'm Cinema Historian and author Dr. Sam Manning.

Welcome to Series 2, where we'll be wondering about the remarkable story of home video in Northern Ireland. 

The rise and fall of videotape, from format wars to video nasties, piracy, paramilitaries and the wonder of the video shop. 

So we want you to... 

SAY YES TO VHS.