I’m going to write about making copies. I’ve also created some art that works well with such a topic.
When I was a child my dad had a mimeograph machine in the basement. He used it to print a newsletter for an organization he was involved with. I never quite understood how such a machine worked. I mean specifically how the plate (stencil) was created, but Wikipedia provided the answer. (Note: A typewrite is used!) I mainly remember the purple “ink” from the copies it created.
One of the “toys” I had as a child was a cassette tape recorder. I remember that when “We Are the Champions” by Queen came out (1977) I held the tape recorder up to the speaker at my uncle’s house as it played so I could make a copy. The first seconds of the recording was my uncle saying “speakers!” as he pointed at the stereo speaker so I could get right in front of it.
Speaking of cassette tapes, I learned about a machine that could duplicate a tape at high speeds! There was one at a local photo development shop. I remember seeing it, but I don’t think I ever got to use. Fast forward a few years later and as a teen I got a dual-cassette deck “boom box” that could copy tapes easily. Then I was in high school and had friends with vinyl records and wanted to make copies, and I could easily make copies using cassette tapes. The world of music (and punk rock specifically) opened up to me.
I eventually learned about photocopiers, most likely at the local library. When I realized there was a photocopier at the school library and I could use it, I started using it. And then I became a zine publisher. I made copies of zines and gave them away, sold them, and traded them. I eventually started making fliers, and I made a lot of copies of fliers and put them up around town. It was art, and it meant something.
The VCR (Video Cassette Recorder) could also make copies! I saved up money from multiple birthdays and holidays to buy my own VCR. Once a friend had one that meant that making copies of tapes was easy.
When the digital world came about (you know, the mid-to-late 1990s when the web exploded) making copies was as easy as dragging and dropping, or doing a “file copy”, or downloading something. The mere action of clicking on a link in your web browser made a copy. Of course we were also warned not to “copy that floppy” and pirate software.
We were living in a world where making copies was extremely easy (and cheap!) but started to disrupt the old model of making money by selling copies. Copy protection got added to a lot of things. DRM, etc… Of course there always the “A-hole”. (The “Analog Hole” is a method to work around copy protection by outputting an analog signal and then capturing that signal. If you’re not super-concerned about loss of quality when making a copy it remains an option today for audio and video… not so much for software.)
Speaking of software, I have one more amusing story about cassette tapes! When I was a kid and my family had an Apple ][+ we went to a friend’s house who also had an Apple Computer so we could swap software. (You know, make copies.) There was some software he had on cassette and the software had some copy protection on it. But guess what happens when you make a high speed duplicate of an audio cassette containing software? Well, you make a copy.
In the modern day people seem to care less about copies. People want access to things via streaming. They don’t even care if they have a copy because that’s some hassle bullshit and they can’t be bothered. They’ll settle for temporary access to media. We’ve even made making copies of your own files (commonly called “backups”) as easy as plugging in an external hard drive and clicking “Okay” but again, it’s just too much work for people.
Meanwhile, people are losing access to things they “bought” because the provider they bought it from has lost the rights to sell (“rent”) it to you. What do you own? There’s a new saying “If buying is not owning then piracy is not stealing”.
Do you know who makes copies? Historians, archivists, record keepers, people who have lost things, artists, writers, smart people, sexy people, and people who care. They all make copies… and so should you.
