THE VIDEO SHELF · deposition reenactment
Verbatim: What Is a Photocopier? | Op-Docs
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.
Why HN readers recommended it
Commenters share it as a funny, memorable example of evasive depositions and of obstruction over public records requests.
This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.
Video & recommendation details
- Creator / channel
- New York Times Opinion
- Topic
- deposition reenactment
- Format
- comedy
- Level
- general
- HN recommenders in dataset
- 4
- HN mentions in dataset
- 9
- Recommendation years in dataset
- 2017–2025
These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.
From the original HN conversations
Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.
The NYT has an amazing video where they got actors to play out the transcript of one of these sorts of depositions. [VIDEO]
ceejayoz on Hacker News · 2020-09
In Revisiting the spectacular failure that was the Bill Gates depositionThere 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 [VIDEO]
wodenokoto on Hacker News · 2021-11
In Dealing with the Evasive Witness> 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 …
philsnow on Hacker News · 2025-03
In Sync Engines Are the Future
Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.