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View topic - Essay about "Century-Scale Storage" and preservation

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Essay about "Century-Scale Storage" and preservation
Post Posted: Sun Dec 15, 2024 5:36 pm
Haven't read it yet
https://lil.law.harvard.edu/century-scale-storage/

Thread
https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@molly0xfff@hachyderm.io/113635491839610569

[..]
"It’s worth considering the efficacy of piracy and the intentional breaking of intellectual property law as a long-term preservation tactic. Abigail De Kosnik, a professor in the Berkeley Center for New Media, contends that, given the nature of digital cultural output and the failures of the current corporate and institutional orders to properly care for them, ..." 5/
[...]
"... piracy-based media preservation efforts are more likely to survive catastrophic future events than traditional institutions. On the other hand, as the notorious prosecution of Aaron Swartz or the legal cases against the Internet Archive demonstrate, engaging in copyright infringement at scale runs the constant risk of sanction and shutdown from state actors." 6/
[...]
"If your goal in century-scale storage is avoiding kinetic, Hollywood-ready catastrophes, then decentralized solutions are ideal, but whether they can combat neglect is less clear. If a decentralized scheme wants to be successful at century scale, this is what they should and must attack. One of the few clear benefits of centralization is that it inspires care. If people know something is important, of value, potentially even the last of something, they tend to fight every day to protect it." 9/
[...]
"What is consistent about these examples is that they all involve groups who care. The most enduring decentralized efforts don’t owe their success to technological or organizational innovation, but rather by having enlisted generations of people with an emotional and intellectual investment in their worth. For both cloud storage services and distributed storage schemes, the question is whether they can provoke the necessary level of passion and watchfulness." 10/
[...]
"The librarians and archivists of the world have been tackling the challenges of digital preservation for decades—the issue is that no one else is. The real solution to century-scale storage, especially at scale, is to change this reality. Successful century-scale storage will require a massive investment in digital preservation, a societal commitment. Politicians, governments, companies, and investors will have to be convinced, incentivized, or even bullied." 12/
[...]
"Every time a media company destroys an archive, every time a video game company prosecutes the preservers of content it has abandoned, every time a tech company kills a well-used product with no plan for preservation, these actions should be met with attention and resistance. We are on the brink of a dark age, or have already entered one." 13/
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Post Posted: Sun Dec 15, 2024 5:39 pm
It's important to understand that our sorts of community only keeps existing because of a mixture of continued care + technical competency. And I have to give it to Maxim for being the head keeping our clunky setup running and reliable. Few other websites have had such a long life.

Of course the website _contents_ keeps growing also because of dozens, hundreds of contributors here (thank you all), but the fact that it stays online and never became a large mess is because the webdevs behind are caring enough to keep it up and sense. In a sense us admins are also the achille's heels of the community and it would be feel to naturally find a third person eventually.

I worry that some communities moving to e.g. Facebook or Instagram or Discord are moving to dislocated storage that are so hard to preserve.
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  • Joined: 29 Jun 1999
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Post Posted: Mon Dec 16, 2024 4:48 pm
I have been part of this community since 1999, and the work you do for gaming preservation is something no company could match.
Thank you everyone and Maxim to keep things rolling smoothly :-)
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