Verbatim: What Is a Photocopier? | Op-Docs
Why Hacker News recommends it
Commenters share it as a funny, memorable example of evasive depositions and of obstruction over public records requests.
What it is
A New York Times Op-Docs short in which actors perform a real legal deposition transcript. A lawyer gets tangled in an absurd argument with a county employee about what counts as a photocopier, in a dispute over fees for public records.
Recommended by 4 HN commenters across 4 different months, 2017 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Recommends ceejayoz · 2020-09 · on “Revisiting the spectacular failure that was the Bill Gates deposition”
The NYT has an amazing video where they got actors to play out the transcript of one of these sorts of depositions. [this video]
Recommends wodenokoto · 2021-11 · on “Dealing with the Evasive Witness”
There is a similar story about an office worker not knowing what a photocopy machine is. The New York Times did an amazing reenactment from transcripts of the legal deposition [this video]
Recommends philsnow · 2025-03 · on “Sync Engines Are the Future”
> Over time, the meaning of the word 'Xerox' changed. More specifically, it gained a new meaning. For a long time, Xerox only referred to a company named in 1961. Some time in the late 60s, it started to be used as a verb, and as I was growing up in the 70s and 80s, the word 'Xerox' was overwhelmingly used in its verb form. [this video] I don't think this dramatization (of a court proceedings from 2010) is related to Xerox's plight with losing their trademark, but said dramatization is brilliant nonetheless
Recommends vel0city · 2025-11 · on “Cities panic over having to release mass surveillance recordings”
I'm reminded of the case of a recorder's office in Ohio charging $2 per page for copies of public documents. NYTimes made a funny dramatization of a transcript from that case, pretty good. What Is a Photocopier? [this video]
Cites tmuir · 2018-03 · on “Facebook Use of Sensitive Data for Advertising in Europe [pdf]”
Its probably safe to assume that the person you're recommending this to has absolutely no idea about the general concepts of software development, or the rough orders of magnitude of information that is reasonable to store and serve with modern infrastructure available to nearly any small business. Its reminiscent of the willful ignorance displayed by the Cuyahoga County Recorders Office, in Ohio. The office responded to FOIA requests by demanding $2 per photocopy, even though the documents were already stored on CDs. They hoped they could simply make freedom of information too expensive. Their legal argument was that the files could be semantically thought of as photocopies of the documents
Cites azernik · 2019-02 · on “Attacking a Pay Wall That Hides Public Court Filings”
Sidenote - this hilarious deposition was in a case about this exact issue (fees for copies of public records). [this video]