[HN Gopher] Almost three quarters of the golden age of Hollywood...
___________________________________________________________________
Almost three quarters of the golden age of Hollywood has been lost
Author : prismatic
Score : 160 points
Date : 2023-04-18 06:19 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.historytoday.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.historytoday.com)
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| Going by the nature of what art has been preserved from the past,
| I am convinced that what is preserved is likely either to be
| religious or porn.
|
| Thus, 500 years from now the works they are most likely to know
| about from this era will be The Passion the Christ and Kim
| Kardashian's tape.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| According to this tome
|
| http://www.wilhelm-research.com/book_toc.html
|
| it was not "films seen as art" that started the preservation wave
| in the 1980s but the introduction of home video which meant that
| a movie like
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wizard_of_Oz_(1939_film)
|
| was suddenly worth millions again.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| The article claims the preservation wave started in the 1960s.
|
| That being said, home video certainly made preservation a lot
| easier, if only because rather than a select few copies being
| made for movie theaters you now were making possibly millions
| for home consumers. That, and extremely flammable/degradable
| media was not suitable for home use.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| There were two waves.
|
| Early on films were make on explosive celluloid base that was
| by no means durable, those were replaced by 'safety film' on
| acetate bases.
|
| Around the 1980s there was a perceived crisis about the
| fading of color film, Martin Scorsese was one of the leaders
| in that movement. People had all kinds of ideas about how to
| preserve color film but it was eventually realized you could
| keep in the freezer for hundreds of years without fading.
| tristor wrote:
| Nearly everything I remember as a cultural artifact from the 80s
| and 90s is gone, except for movies and video games, both of which
| have been preserved only due to illegal copyright infringement.
| Nearly every aspect of my online presence and the people who
| influenced my formative years, things like the local dial-in BBS,
| some of the Usenet groups, and the many MUDs are all gone, poof,
| vanished.
|
| I imagine more of human culture has been lost than preserved at
| nearly every point in history, but as with other commenters, I
| expect online culture in particular will be lost to memory due to
| the folly of US copyright law, the US global hegemony (primarily
| focused on enforcing said laws), and the US being a lynchpin to
| the early Internet.
| 49erfangoniners wrote:
| Should have been less restrictive about ip, I guess.
| therealmarv wrote:
| Without archive.org we could say the very same about the
| Internet.
|
| Although there is not much of an archive of before 1996/1995
| (it's lost)
| xref wrote:
| Before that it was 20 years of BBS content that is sadly mostly
| lost.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| There's definitely a lot lost from the era of personal home
| pages.
| macrolime wrote:
| There's not much from the 90s at all really. While some stuff
| is there, most of the stuff I remember from the 90s isn't on
| archive.org and probably nowhere else, except maybe in someones
| old hard drives or floppy disks at the bottom of a drawer.
| therealmarv wrote:
| if somebody has some 90s webpages in their drawer: Please
| reach out to archive.org ;)
| yamtaddle wrote:
| The main geocities-alike web host I used around IIRC
| 1998-2001 is just _gone_ , as far as I can tell. I think it
| was called spree.com. The spaces were intended to be used by
| some kind of sales affiliates, I think, but were _de facto_
| just little ad-free (unlike other hosts) web spaces with a
| decent amount of storage (a few MB, I think?). I wasn 't the
| only one just using it as free web hosting.
|
| I've tried a couple times, and can find no record of the
| service ever having existed, let alone any of the content
| that was on it (mine, or any other).
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Do you think this might be related? If it is, you seem to
| have gotten the name right!
|
| http://www.4degreez.com/popupsmustdie/solutions/spree.htm
| squarefoot wrote:
| Something from that era that was also published in the form
| of CD has been archived, fortunately.
|
| http://cd.textfiles.com/directory.html
| somat wrote:
| It's fine, Sturgeon's law applies to this just as it applies
| everything else.
|
| you don't need to keep everything, there does not need to be a
| frantic effort to obsessively horde every single thing ever
| created, things get lost, room is made for new things to be made.
|
| You do however want to make an effort to save the 10 percent of
| things that are actually any good.
| Aloha wrote:
| _Which_ Golden Age? Yes, the preservation for pre-1927 films is
| very very poor, 3 /4's was lost, with most of that loss being
| things make before 1925.
|
| Much more of the post-1927 content was preserved (more of it was
| preserved with sound once we switched to sound on film) - I'd
| note however that Silent Movies are virtually unrecognizable by
| modern viewers as being even the same art form as sound pictures
| - and sound movies didnt reach the same... production values? as
| the silents until 1936-37.
|
| The period between 1927-and 1937 was a period of reinvention and
| learning of a new medium, which is why - my general take is the
| golden age of Hollywood was 1939 to 1959.
|
| Consider what films came out in 1939 -
|
| * Gone with the Wind
|
| * Wizard of Oz
|
| * Mr. Smith goes to Washington
|
| These are films that still find audiences today, now - 80 years
| or so on.
|
| Most Americans might have seen _one_ movie produced between 1927
| and 1938 - but most people who are above 30 have seen at least
| two those three movies at least once.
|
| And that trend continues from there on - where 1940 to 1959, most
| americans have seen _one_ movie released in each of those years.
|
| So while I dont disagree that we are losing heritage in these
| things - I take issue with their definition of _Golden Age_ and
| the idea that there is value in saving everything ever written or
| filmed.
|
| Much of it wasnt meant to be relevant for decades, it was meant
| to be ephemeral topical entertainment, and functionally intended
| to be disposable. Most of the production of Poverty Row, and B
| pictures by the majors are like this, they were intended for
| Block Booking, and largely just as a way to fill the content
| needs of the theaters and as a way to provide steady revenue in
| the event an A picture flopped.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| 1939? I suppose you have to pick a year and call that the
| cutoff.
|
| But you're cutoff leaves to the "Dark Ages" the films
| _Frankenstein_ (1931), _Love Me Tonight_ (1931), _42nd Street_
| (1933), _Gold Diggers of 1933_ (1933), _King Kong_ (1933), _It
| Happened One Night_ (1934), _The Thin Man_ (1934), _My Man
| Godfrey_ (1936), _Stella Dallas_ (1937), _Snow White and the
| Seven Dwarfs_ (1937) and _The Adventures of Robin Hood_ (1938)
| to name a few.
| Aloha wrote:
| When I was mentioning most people have only see one pre-1939
| film, I was specifically thinking of _Snow White_.
|
| While I do not deny that movies of that era are often highly
| influential on later films, they do not lend themselves to
| modern watchability, because of the technical limitations of
| the medium at the time. _Snow White_ being a notable
| exception because it was the literal first of its kind, and
| Disney has successfully restored and rereleased it decade
| after decade.
|
| Largely I'm a believer that the merits of the film itself
| will lead to its preservation and often _restoration_ and
| preservation just for the sake of preservation isn 't all
| that valuable a use of a limited resource.
| ehvatum wrote:
| > Much of it wasnt meant to be relevant for decades, it was
| meant to be ephemeral topical entertainment, and functionally
| intended to be disposable.
|
| As with Pompeii graffiti and warehouse cuneiform tally tablets,
| from the anthropological perspective, the ephemeral is
| interesting.
|
| Old entertainment that seems alien has a lot to offer for
| understanding culture that was.
| tivert wrote:
| > As with Pompeii graffiti and warehouse cuneiform tally
| tablets, from the anthropological perspective, the ephemeral
| is interesting.
|
| It's only interesting after a _looong_ period were it was
| very much _un_ interesting, causing so much to be destroyed
| until what remained became interesting as a rarity.
|
| I think it's very likely that process of destruction is
| _necessary_ to make past ephemera valuable.
| Aloha wrote:
| Do you need all of it, or like 30-40% of it?
|
| The costs to try to save all of it are vast - the costs to
| try to save some of it are pretty reasonable. What's
| interesting is what has survived from the 20's was mostly by
| accident.
| pimlottc wrote:
| I think most people would agree with you, the trouble is
| getting them all to agree on the same 30-40%...
| Aloha wrote:
| I think on some level the relative rareness of the stuff
| that gets preserved, means there is a natural
| distribution left for the 40%.
| sharkjacobs wrote:
| Yeah, misleading headline. The article says "During the golden
| age of the silent movie (1912-29)", which is distinct from "the
| golden age of Hollywood" which typically describes the studio
| era, up through 1959, as you say.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| > Much of it wasnt meant to be relevant for decades
|
| That doesn't matter though. I find silent movies interesting
| simply because of their age. It's a window into how people
| lived back then. Compare what's in the homes of the "average
| person" in a silent film to what you see in one of today's
| movies.
| Aloha wrote:
| Is it? Often the people featured in films were.. basically
| only the wealthy classes. We have ample example of how they
| lived.
|
| Also, often movies today do not depict an average person,
| they depict an idealized version of that. We have stills of
| the real thing, lots of them.
|
| Bear in mind I'm not arguing _against_ preservation - but its
| a limited resource, I 'd prioritize early home movies and
| industrial films (what little there was) over the traditional
| A or B picture studio output.
| justinator wrote:
| One of the most celebrated silent film characters was, "The
| Little Tramp", featuring their misadventures in trying to
| stay alive and not starve, being an immigrant, taking on
| terrible and oven dangerous jobs, etc.
| BryantD wrote:
| And yet Poverty Row produced Detour, one of the best noirs ever
| made. The intentions aren't the only thing that matter here;
| the art does.
|
| Further, it's not purely about entertainment value. I recently
| watched Les Vampires, a 1916 serial from France. It's true that
| the theatrical conventions aren't the ones we know today, but
| it was fascinating watching Louis Feuillade figure out how to
| make a thriller on the fly, and some of the ideas he came up
| with created our current theatrical conventions. That
| historical understanding is important.
| Aloha wrote:
| Thats the _most_ part - and to be honest, in my opinion, most
| of the best Film Noir was probably produced by Poverty Row -
| even Poverty Row 's output post 1939 became much more
| relevant for modern audiences - like on average even a
| Poverty Row picture in the post war era had better production
| values (on whole) than an A picture from a major in 1933 -
| simply because the state of the art had moved so dramatically
| forward.
|
| Incidentally one of my favorite Noir's is _He Walked by
| Night_ featuring a very very young Jack Webb. I 'll check out
| Detour though.
| BryantD wrote:
| Oh, man, I envy you the experience of seeing it for the
| first time.
| Aloha wrote:
| I will give it this - the cinematography is very very
| good.
| [deleted]
| ShadowBanThis01 wrote:
| It's still happening. Remember the Universal Music fire? The
| scope of the damage from that is still a subject of debate:
| https://variety.com/2020/music/news/universal-music-fire-arc...
|
| Even worse is that we have music labels intentionally and
| methodically destroying generations' worth of music with dynamic
| compression, making despicable "remasters" the only thing
| available to modern listeners. What happens to the originals? Is
| anyone tracking their provenance?
| tedunangst wrote:
| A 25% retention rate is pretty good compared to the 4000 years of
| culture that preceded it. Who was the best King Lear in 1842?
| What made their performance special?
| jowdones wrote:
| Yeah and additionally, most silent movies were garbage. Even
| the good ones are total crap by modern standards.
|
| Who would have watched them again? A few weirdos and only a
| tiny random subset chosen by random criteria. Might as well
| watch the 25% that was preserved and is waay too high anyway.
|
| Some things must just go away.
| Aloha wrote:
| Some did reach the same production values as modern films -
| but Silent Film was functionally a completely different art
| form than Talkies.
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| A release rate of three per day (overall)!
|
| This isn't that much different from the rate at which stuff comes
| up in my modest set of Youtube subscriptions. And what of that
| stuff is worth a rewatch or considered culturally significant?
| And yet! 100 years from now they'll lament that so much of
| today's pop culture has simply been lost to random deletion or
| bit rot.
| overthrow wrote:
| > And what of that stuff is worth a rewatch or considered
| culturally significant?
|
| In some cases you won't know until decades later, when one of
| those videos becomes "lost media" and people start looking for
| it.
|
| That's why, as long as people are willing to buy hard drives to
| store everything, we should let them save as much as they want
| for the future. Because you never know.
| chx wrote:
| Already the link rot on youtube is significant. Very often I
| will find links like "listen to this music it's good", you go
| to youtube and not even the metadata is left, it's just an
| error page so you have no idea what it even was.
| judge2020 wrote:
| I know YouTube will throw a video to an extremely slow
| archival hard disk where getting 720p requires waiting a few
| minutes for YT to (presumably) move it to some regular
| storage tier with reasonable write speeds. But I've never
| heard of there being rot on the actual data YT stores, and I
| imagine it's on the same policy as Drive files where they're
| globally redundant, or at least in two different DCs.
| beerandt wrote:
| It's more about policy than physical existence.
|
| I have yet to see a definitive answer re true originals
| being kept vs iterations of transcodes as the preferred
| codec changes.
|
| Or similar questions about deleted videos getting flagged
| vs scrubbed, etc.
|
| Or who might ever have access to originals in either case.
| xyzzy_plugh wrote:
| I believe the parent is referring to deleted content, not
| literal unintended data loss.
| AlexAplin wrote:
| Neil Cicierega's Ariel Needs Legs somewhat infamously had
| the audio corrupted on its YouTube upload over time:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nH6ya5g2-s
|
| It actually seems better from when I last looked at it, but
| you can you still hear skipping and audio jitter around
| spots like at 0:18. I've seen similar behavior on Twitter
| video uploads over the last few years.
| lesfts wrote:
| I've seen video corruption myself on this video:
| https://youtu.be/XmWgskZFkh4. It's fixed now but there were
| glitches in the video and audio for a couple of years but
| somehow got fixed.
| prithee wrote:
| It is, which is tragic when trying to preserve favorites and
| all trace is gone (including titles.)
|
| I'll intentionally duplicate playlist entries (two different
| uploaders) as a buffer against rot.
| xmprt wrote:
| Music on YouTube is probably a bad example because it's
| subject to a lot of weird licensing restrictions and
| copyright claims.
| chx wrote:
| Yes but is that reason to delete the metadata as well?
| AlanSE wrote:
| Perhaps non-human entities will lament that. Or perhaps humans
| who are leveraging more advanced search/discovery tools to look
| for specific things.
|
| Otherwise, there is too much content for anyone to view.
| jb1991 wrote:
| It's not just century-old movies, many much more recent movies
| which were available on DVD are almost impossible to find now
| that everything is to the whim of streamers and online services.
|
| Here are some examples: https://johnaugust.com/2018/missing-
| movies
| dylan604 wrote:
| >everything is to the whim of streamers
|
| Is it though? To me, it seems much more to the whim of the
| content owners. If they choose to not make it available to the
| streamers, then it's not the streamer's fault for not having
| it.
| freejazz wrote:
| Except that the streamers don't take everything that is
| available... streaming has a cost to bear.
| usefulcat wrote:
| > A more immediate way of getting some action would be to talk
| to some of the directors with films on the list and encourage
| them to get their movies released digitally. Ron Howard and
| James Cameron are obvious candidates.
|
| Interesting side note: a couple of years back, I wanted to buy
| The Abyss on blu-ray. When I went to look, all I could find
| were DVD versions and a crappy fake blu-ray version where
| someone had just ripped a DVD and transferred it to blu-ray
| (seriously).
|
| After a bit of digging, I came to find out that there is no
| blu-ray version of The Abyss because (basically) Cameron has
| been holding it up. I don't recall the exact details, but it
| has something to do with him wanting to oversee it personally,
| yet simultaneously never bothering to actually bother to get it
| done.
|
| Looked again just now and supposedly the work has finally been
| done (?) and it was to be available last month, yet as of right
| now it's not available on amazon, so who knows..
| Kiro wrote:
| That's not the same thing. The article is talking about movies
| that are completely lost. No-one has a backup and no-one will
| ever see them again.
| colpabar wrote:
| [flagged]
| jimbob45 wrote:
| "Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book
| rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and
| street building has been renamed, every date has been altered.
| And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute.
| History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present
| in which the Party is always right."
|
| -- George Orwell, 1984
| anthk wrote:
| Good for your ignorance. Ever heard of 40's/50's golden era of
| the comic books, with progressive (for its day) themes?
|
| Also, by hiding and eliminating proofs of racism/sexism, how
| would the world know that racism/sexism was a reality?
| colpabar wrote:
| > Ever heard of 40's/50's golden era of the comic books, with
| progressive (for its day) themes?
|
| You mean the ones written by old straight white men? No thank
| you!
|
| > how would the world know that racism/sexism was a reality?
|
| They'd learn it in their DEI classes in both school and work.
| genewitch wrote:
| by the 40s, most radio _drama_ was not any of those things, at
| least not to an offensive degree. I 've only seen a few very
| old movies and caricatures are annoying, but it's a product of
| the time. There's no reason to wipe it off the planet.
| anthk wrote:
| I'm hearing the "Old Radio" archives, and Dimension X it's
| highly recommended for what it was for its era. Remember: the
| sci-fi folks mostly were the progressive ones, just look at
| Star Trek from the 60's. Or The Twilight Zone from the 50's.
| genewitch wrote:
| My favorites are:
|
| Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar
|
| Phillip Marlowe
|
| Richard Diamond
|
| these are all noir (hardboiled) detectives, although Johnny
| and Richard are much more lighthearted... uh, at heart.
| stametseater wrote:
| When discussing the era of scientific racism, it's a
| mistake to assume that interest in science correlated with
| socially progressive beliefs, in the modern sense of
| progress.
| anthk wrote:
| It depends on the artwork. Most pulp and scifi comics
| were progressive and "scientific racism" had no sense
| from a huge intergalactic biology review. Wars? yes, OFC.
|
| Stereotypes? Back and forth. Cultures were far more
| isolated back in the day and the typical " 'murican
| Southern/Chicagoan journalist/NYC cop" on a Franco-
| Belgian comic-book was given as a fact.
| justinator wrote:
| MySpace Music can be used as another example,
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/b2381s/myspace_...
| stiglitz wrote:
| That's odd- the first film mentioned by this article (Ben-Hur
| from 1925), which it describes as completely lost, is not lost,
| at least according to its wikipedia article. Apparently it was
| (at least) partly considered lost until being found again in the
| 80's. Not sure whether to trust TFA on any other claims now.
| pavon wrote:
| The article doesn't say that Ben-Hur was lost. It says that
| another movie, The Devil Dancer, by the same director was lost.
| mortenjorck wrote:
| I was already familiar with the perils of nitrate, but I never
| knew distribution patterns were such a big factor in the loss of
| vintage films.
|
| I have some memories of the concept of "second-run" theaters
| growing up, but I had no idea there was once such a long-tail
| network of nth-run cinemas that the total number of prints in
| distribution would need only be a fraction of modern releases.
| rjbwork wrote:
| This is what today's IP oligopolists would have happen to the
| bulk of culture. I find it exceedingly unlikely that all IP will
| be maintained by the owner for the life of the author plus 70
| years. We know there are gobs of cultural artifacts from as
| recently as the 80s (videos, games, etc.) that are permanently
| lost.
|
| Without short copyright terms and the encouragement of
| independent archivalists, we ensure most cultural artifacts will
| be lost to time.
| tivert wrote:
| > This is what today's IP oligopolists would have happen to the
| bulk of culture. I find it exceedingly unlikely that all IP
| will be maintained by the owner for the life of the author plus
| 70 years. We know there are gobs of cultural artifacts from as
| recently as the 80s (videos, games, etc.) that are permanently
| lost.
|
| > Without short copyright terms and the encouragement of
| independent archivalists, we ensure most cultural artifacts
| will be lost to time.
|
| Firstly, copyright doesn't have anything do with the problem
| outlined in the OP, that 75% of "golden age" silent movies have
| been lost. The reason it identifies is that these films were
| "few, fragile, flammable" and that "almost no one thought they
| were worth saving." Copies weren't going to magically appear:
| if they were fragile, expensive to produce, and viewed as
| ephemeral _nothing_ short of some kind of expensive government
| mandate would have led to much higher preservation rates. Such
| a mandate would not happen unless there was a contemporary
| interest in preservation, _which there wasn 't_.
|
| Secondly, running an archive isn't free. Short copyright terms
| might actually lead to _less_ preservation, since that would
| make the creator be even _less_ motivated to preserve the work
| for the long term. I 'm not sure what you mean by "independent
| archivalists," but if it's data hoarders (individuals or
| collectively) that's not really going to cut it. The data on
| someone's hard drive array is very unlikely live past its
| owner, it will be almost certainly junked by the heirs to the
| estate. Preservation really requires an institution.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > Secondly, running an archive isn't free. Short copyright
| terms might actually lead to less preservation, since that
| would make the creator be even less motivated to preserve the
| work for the long term.
|
| Yet archives have very high public value. We've recognized
| that since the formation of the library of congress.
|
| The issue I think we have is we already have a system
| mandated to archive copyrighted material, yet it's not been
| advanced to accommodate the digital era and there's no
| mandate that IP holders aid it in retention.
|
| I think increasing public spending so the likes of
| archive.org can continue to function would be a net good for
| society.
| javajosh wrote:
| Surely that much data has value somewhere, and a marketplace
| can be formed where decaying film on one side is auctioned to
| AI training data stores on the other. Older material is more
| valuable since it starts human measurement earlier, and so can
| predict longer-term shifts.
|
| (Imagination in service to neoliberal capitalism - it's a real
| world _Hyperion_ novel, forums like this mind-jack you with
| arcane symbols into miniscule wiggles in the GHz range, roughly
| 1500*8 bytes of them at a time, pushed through a radio, into
| the kernel, into a program, and spat out into an array of
| glowing quantum effects... But still, even here, Buster Keaton
| is funny.)
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Copyright laws govern distribution, and permit noncommercial
| uses such as archiving copies. Technologically it has never
| been easier to capture and store media, and many people and
| organizations do.
|
| Things from the 80s are permanently lost simply because no one
| bothered to preserve copies of them.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Yeah it's easy, but nobody does it for real.
|
| I live in a small country with a weird language, that was one
| a part of a larger country with a few other weird languages
| and a lot of good music.
|
| A bunch of that music is lost forever now... some newer
| artists still play the old songs, but there are no recorded
| originals. For some songs you can only find shitty quality
| recordings on youtube when someone recorded an audio tape to
| a youtube video at shitty quality and split into 10minute
| chunks. Original recording studios don't exist anymore, CDs
| maybe existed, maybe not, tapes surely did, but those
| degraded a lot, modern streaming has made piracy hard, since
| there are not a lot of listeners who would rip that, and
| youtube only has that song in a video format, with a video
| intro, and a silent part in between to make the video make
| sense (unlike a radio edit). And even if people somehow
| downloaded and stored that music, how am I supposed to get it
| too? Torrenting is hard for many people, services like kazaa
| don't exist anymore, existing torrent sites close down, zero
| seeders on what's left over and even less ways to actually
| find it online.
|
| Yeah, sure, all that music could fit on a single modern hard
| drive, but nobody put it there and made it available for
| others, and in turn, it is lost, either fully (noone has the
| HQ original anymore) or partially (some people have it, for
| now, but others are unable to obtain it).
|
| I'd much prefer some national archive taking those recordings
| (music, videos, books, etc.), digitizing them (or preferably
| starting with a digital version) and then offer it for
| download after some reasonable amount of time (which would be
| way shorter than death+70 years). A good indicator for 'when'
| would be the availability of the media... Am I unable to buy
| it in a reasonable way for a reasonable price? Ok, it's
| protected. Noone is selling it anymore, or not selling it in
| my country (even digitally)... the author/publshed obviously
| doesn't want my money, so why complain if it's on offer for
| free.
|
| TLDR: think of your favourite non-mainstream band from 20
| years ago and try to download their songs.. good luck with
| that.
| bratwurst3000 wrote:
| What Alan lomax did or what fat possum record are doing is
| extremely hard work and it's sad that there aren't many
| more people like those. If somone would start a kickstarter
| to preserve old traditional music I would be the first to
| support them.
|
| Btw if you don't know them there is a amazing documentary
| from fat possum about their work on YouTube.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| It seems like there needs to be some understanding of
| "benefitting from one's own work" as part of this conversation.
|
| If I make a thing, and am actively providing it for
| consumption, I have an interest in maintaining its integrity.
|
| Contrarily, if I have made something, but it's just sitting
| idling away as something I simply own as an IP, it will be
| allowed to languish, in every sense of the word.
|
| There are similar concepts with trademarks; if you don't
| actively defend trademark usages, you stand the risk of losing
| it to the public domain.
|
| Likewise, if you don't actually provide your creation to the
| public in a consumable way, you should lose the ability to
| claim it.
| GalenErso wrote:
| I download YouTube videos I like. A number of them aren't
| available anymore. As far as I am aware, I have the last
| backups. I've also downloaded obscure .swf files and weird
| soundtracks and sound effects from obscure and now deprecated
| flash games I used to play in my youth.
| Ruthalas wrote:
| If you feel like chatting with others who also archive
| YouTube (and other) content, consider stopping by my discord
| server: https://discord.gg/rgBHGm9mTC
|
| We maintain a central list [1] of content that various
| members have archived, so that when content is removed from
| YouTube, people can direct inquiries to contributors who have
| archived that content.
|
| It's a small way to keep track of what things have been
| successfully archived, and sometimes direct efforts to
| preserve specific content.
|
| [1] https://tinyurl.com/v4rpe9w
| hakonhaki wrote:
| Not a huge collector but so checkout moonwalk.swf
|
| Not too hard to find, but a beautiful animation of a human
| struggling yo walk home on the moon... you'll love it
| mypastself wrote:
| Per the article, first ever attempts at preservation were
| intended for copyright protection. I'm not following the logic
| of why IP owners would _want_ media to become lost.
| judge2020 wrote:
| I don't think copyright has much to do with it, but rather the
| lack of (cheap) recording/duplicating equipment people had
| access to before the 80's. As soon as VCRs were on the scene,
| your average American quickly got to recording broadcast
| content to VHS tapes for either sharing it with friends or
| personal archival.
| zehaeva wrote:
| I'm sure all of those VHS tapes are still perfectly viewable
| today!
| MPSimmons wrote:
| The point of the parent comment is that, if the copyright
| people had their way, VCRs and the like would be irrelevant,
| because they would make it so that you _couldn't_ back up
| media. It's a pattern that keeps repeating itself. Copyright
| owners with deep enough pockets try to build "anti-piracy"
| technical measures which actually just prevent people from
| backing up their media, while piracy continues unabated
| regardless of those technical hurdles that impact 99% of
| people.
| tivert wrote:
| > The point of the parent comment is that, if the copyright
| people had their way, VCRs and the like would be
| irrelevant, because they would make it so that you
| _couldn't_ back up media.
|
| The (grand)parent comment didn't talk about any of that.
| vkou wrote:
| > Without short copyright terms and the encouragement of
| independent archivalists, we ensure most cultural artifacts
| will be lost to time. Which is great for creating cultural
| scarcity, because it means that people will:
|
| 1. Keep buying new things.
|
| 2. Pay through the nose for rare old cultural artifacts.
| vlunkr wrote:
| Sadly pirates are a critical piece of media preservation.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Why sadly?
|
| If the corporation who owns the original IP, abandoned it for
| 10+ years with no way of legitimately buying it from them,
| then it means they don't want our money and they don't care
| about it, so it's fair game.
|
| I'm doing my part.
| skyyler wrote:
| Sadly; because a noble pursuit has been reduced to literal
| crime...
| vlunkr wrote:
| Exactly. If the content owners were more responsible, or
| if IP laws were better, it wouldn't be necessary.
| jzb wrote:
| Sadly because the industry actively fights against it, and
| people can be punished for it.
|
| Also "sadly" because it's not exactly a dependable process
| -- we're depending on people to spontaneously choose to
| preserve / share media widely enough there will be decent
| copies when/if they go out of "legitimate" circulation.
|
| It'd be better if archiving & preserving copies were a
| mandatory step to being awarded copyright protection.
| (Which would not displace filesharing, of course...)
| ryandrake wrote:
| Another sad thing is the mentality of IP rightsholders.
| For abandoned songs/movies/works that don't make any
| money anymore, they'd rather expend the cost/effort to
| destroy them than allow them to be distributed for free,
| even though destroying them is likely more expensive.
| Totally malicious. Reminds me of grocery stores that
| throw out food at the end of the day and spend effort
| guarding the dumpsters so nobody gets food for free.
| JasserInicide wrote:
| Lots of rare music found nowhere else was lost when what.cd
| got shut down
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| This may sound like a conspiracy but I think the industry
| wants people to buy new content not enjoy the hits from
| yesteryear.
| stinkytaco wrote:
| I think they want you to rebuy old content in new forms,
| pure profit. Or better yet, rent it in perpetuity.
| jwagenet wrote:
| This is more or less what the entire entertainment
| industry is doing with endless reboots, sequels,
| remasters, new formats, etc.
| rockemsockem wrote:
| There was some study I saw, maybe even released by
| Spotify, that showed that a massive percentage (maybe a
| majority?) of streamed music was several decades old.
|
| So they're raking in cash from rent seeking really. It
| would be healthier for music if what you said was true
| though.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Shutting down a tracker doesn't delete the files people
| have.
|
| The music wasn't lost. It just became harder to pirate.
| beerandt wrote:
| Do any music trackers still exist?
|
| Not looking to out any underground trackers, but am curious
| as someone who wasn't ever on what.cd and hasn't ever
| replaced long "hiatus" then gone waffles.
|
| Does any active and/or extensive site survive?
| tern wrote:
| Most certainly, see: https://www.reddit.com/r/trackers/co
| mments/tw4ji0/tracker_fa...
| dtx1 wrote:
| redacted is supposed to be the new whatcd using a similar
| interview process and all.
|
| To be fair i'm out of the piracy game when it comes to
| music though since spotify is more convenient to use
| akomtu wrote:
| Pirates are just independent corsairs. The latter are pirates
| who work for the king, they are doing the same kind of
| robbery, but since the king profits off it, they are called
| "legal". That's what modern copyright holders are: pirates
| backed by the king.
| strken wrote:
| This is wrong. Privateers, which is the more general class
| corsairs belonged to, were akin to modern PMCs and operated
| under similar constraints. They mostly obeyed the rules of
| war, were punished when they did not, and their conduct was
| similar to national ships in nearly every regard. They took
| prisoners of war and were taken prisoner in turn.
|
| When one group is taking ships and killing every living
| thing on it then illegally selling the cargo and personal
| effects of the occupants, and another group is taking ships
| and dropping the occupants off at a POW camp then sending
| it to the admiralty to be legally sold, the latter is not
| doing the same kind of robbery. Arguably they aren't doing
| any kind of robbery at all.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It was the colonial era, right? That a gang of thieves
| and thugs stole enough to afford fancy wigs and crowns
| doesn't make them legitimate.
| strken wrote:
| The legitimacy of a government, or lack thereof, does not
| make executing the entire crew of a ship morally
| equivalent to sending them to a POW camp.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Happily, file sharing enthusiasts are a critical piece of
| media preservation.
|
| Piracy is a violent crime, file sharing is not comparable to
| it in any way.
| nine_k wrote:
| To say the truth, files to be shared often need to be
| produced first: books scanned and OCRed, DVDs grabbed and
| repackaged, games actually cracked, etc. There is a scene
| beyond just people running Bittorrent nodes.
| pizzaknife wrote:
| If it is as truly violent as the "piracy" label suggests,
| then is this not "war on drugs" in another vestige?
| nine_k wrote:
| I can agree that "piracy" is an unnecessarily violent
| label (no swords, no drowned ships), but it sort of
| became the standard word in media.
|
| AFAICT the actual scene prefers terns like "release
| group", because it's indeed what they do: release bits
| from the confines of DRM or dead trees.
| tivert wrote:
| > Happily, file sharing enthusiasts are a critical piece of
| media preservation.
|
| > Piracy is a violent crime, file sharing is not comparable
| to it in any way.
|
| Sorry, the meaning of "pirate" you dislike is already
| firmly established, and you're frankly not going to be able
| to change that.
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pirate
|
| > 2: to take or appropriate by piracy: such as
|
| > a: to reproduce without authorization especially in
| infringement of copyright
| unixgoddess wrote:
| a better word would be parasites...
| rockemsockem wrote:
| Quite the opposite actually.
|
| Studies have found that those who pirate content tend to
| purchase significantly more content than the average
| person.
| beerandt wrote:
| Idk the exact mechanisms that should be used, but have long
| said that copyright protection of all forms should be dependent
| on the rights holder depositing and funding the archival (to a
| minimum length of the expiration of the work's copyright + x
| years), such that public has access to the work upon
| expiration.
|
| Include a mechanism that allows encryption keys to be held in
| escrow, to be released publicly for all drm schemes the work is
| released on.
|
| The LoC may or may not be the best avenue for such a scheme,
| but it should be funded by the rights holder as a condition of
| the protected term (or maybe for an extension beyond a base
| term of ~12years ala patents).
| beerandt wrote:
| To reply to the dead sibling comment:
|
| Depositing a copy of a book to the LoC is already the (dated)
| default behavior for hard-copy published text. Even if it's
| not strictly required, it mostly works.
|
| But as I said, perhaps you get a base 12 years protection
| just by publishing (the status quo, but shorter base term),
| and only register the source/ archive if protection beyond
| that is financially worthwhile.
|
| DRM content that wants DMCA type protection (hopefully a more
| reasonably thought out protection) requires a single tested
| key in escrow per protected work, or doesn't get any
| circumvention or takedown protection.
|
| The exact mechanisms and terms would need to be tweaked by
| format and maybe even market, but the idea is to create
| underlying aligned incentives, without unduly burdening
| casual creators who might not wish to opt-in.
| sacrosancty wrote:
| [dead]
| breck wrote:
| Stephan Kinsella's talk "Intellectual Nonsense: Fallacious
| Arguments for IP", is a must watch. There's no reason to have
| IP law and in fact there is actually good reason to believe
| they stand on shaky legal ground.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0RXfGGMGPE
|
| One of the arguments he brings up is that the Constitution
| specifically says "To promote the Progress of Science and
| useful Arts". It can be argued that IP law does not do this. In
| fact it does the opposite. As soon as you have a patent or
| copyright on something you are incentivized to _not_ promote
| the progress of science and arts, at least not until your
| monopoly terms expire (which is never, with the copyright
| extensions).
| CamArchibald wrote:
| [dead]
| justinator wrote:
| Someone's gunna lose the private key for all that DRM media and
| then whoops.
| sacrosancty wrote:
| [dead]
| bazoom42 wrote:
| It is not illegal to own and preserve media which is still
| under copyright. IP is not the problem, the problem is nobody
| cared until it was too late.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Format shifting in the US is only permitted for audio
| recordings. Doing the same for video is a copyright violation
| even if you keep it to yourself.
| throwaway6477 wrote:
| [dead]
| irrational wrote:
| What makes it the golden age? I'd much rather have Raiders of the
| Lost Ark than Metropolis.
| iamerroragent wrote:
| It's just a conveniention as far as I am aware. Similar one is
| applied to comics.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Age
| jdfellow wrote:
| There's a long-standing convention of "golden age" meaning the
| first age, when an art came into its own. A "silver age"
| follows if there's a revolution in the art, often with some
| sort of decline between.
| Aloha wrote:
| Its not an unreasonable thought to consider Silent Films and
| Sound Films to be completely different art forms as well.
| BudaDude wrote:
| I wonder if that means we are currently in the golden age of
| AI Art
| stametseater wrote:
| Who needs Rome? Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas is much better...
|
| Seriously, of all the modern movies to pick, you choose one
| who's entire shtick is referencing and celebrating (or
| commercially exploiting) memory of the old movies you mean to
| denigrate with this comparison?
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| There's a lot of dismissive posts in this thread, and I think
| some people are missing an issue here.
|
| When documenting the history of anything, it's rarely a bad thing
| to have a lot of data. Here, the preservation of these films is a
| documentation of history. When we talk about the art form of
| film, we see the giants and then work backwards. How much has
| Spielberg, for example, benefitted from being able to watch
| Kurosawa? Who influenced Kurosawa? Who influenced the people who
| influenced Kurosawa? Yeah, it's a bit like counting turtles, but
| since when has adding granularity to our knowledge-base ever been
| a bad thing? If it turns out that Kurosawa didn't create a
| technique because someone else did it first, that doesn't matter,
| because he still did something that synthesized it into something
| special. Even the giants stood on shoulders.
| charles_f wrote:
| And yet "reaction" videos with someone stealing content and
| looking bored in the bottom left of your screen will still be
| available for everyone for the ages to come.
| jmclnx wrote:
| Well I thought the Golden Age was the 30s and 40s, not the Silent
| Era. But sad to hear many of those old pictures are gone.
| glofish wrote:
| Is it really a big deal that some really old movies are lost ...
| sorry but I just don't see why ...
|
| I wish lots of content disappeared - in the past the passage of
| time was a way to filter for quality, because we only bothered to
| preserve something worth preserving.
|
| Forgetting is also a gift - it is is foolish to think that you
| have to preserve everything.
|
| I think it is a much bigger problem that too much of today's
| photos and videos are preserved.
|
| Every phenomenal photo of a sunset takes away the future
| generation's credit when recreating an identically phenomenal
| sunset.
|
| The current archival processes are something so radically new, we
| don't yet understand how it shapes society.
| duped wrote:
| > Every phenomenal photo of a sunset takes away the future
| generation's credit when recreating an identically phenomenal
| sunset.
|
| It also takes away future generations' knowledge that such a
| phenomenal photo can be taken and potentially the means to do
| so.
| troutwine wrote:
| > I wish lots of content disappeared - in the past the passage
| of time was a way to filter for quality, because we only
| bothered to preserve something worth preserving.
|
| While I agree that preserving through something through time
| does take intentional effort I disagree that this acts as a
| 'quality' filter. What we've received from the past comes to us
| through a surprising amount of accidents, or close scrapes.
| Beowulf exists now in millions of copies but the original is a
| single, damaged codex. Was Beowulf worth preserving more than
| the other, now lost oral poems of that era? Gilgamesh was
| popular in the ancient world and was told and retold, yet we
| still don't have and may never have a complete Gilgamesh. Is it
| not worth preserving? It may be, through sheer blind luck, that
| in 10,000 years some trade paperback you have in your home
| right now will be the only written example of your native
| tongue. Is all the literature composed in your tongue not worth
| preserving?
|
| > The current archival processes are something so radically
| new, we don't yet understand how it shapes society.
|
| Are they so new? And, as to how archival practices shape
| society, I think you need only look at the European Renaissance
| to see what a rediscovery of the past will do to a people. Or,
| consider the rediscovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls on Biblical
| scholarship in the modern era.
| sonofhans wrote:
| "Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it." I
| find that more compelling than, "Erase the past so we can build
| again."
|
| The primary function of culture is to pass knowledge and habits
| to the next generation. If we remember the past we can build on
| it -- standing on the shoulders of giants, as they say --
| rather than re-finding old mistakes.
|
| Old movies teach us about (of course) old movies, and that's
| interesting for anyone learning the art. Even in very dated art
| there is often something worth copying, stealing, learning
| from.
|
| Old movies teach us about ourselves, and in a more visceral way
| than any other art form. Some of those old movies show cultural
| context in a way that's difficult to document -- clothes,
| street signs, mannerisms, slang.
|
| There are already plenty of forces intent upon the destruction
| of old cultural artifacts, from Egyptian pharaohs breaking
| monuments of prior rulers, to the burning of the library at
| Alexandria, to the looting of the Baghdad museums in the Gulf
| War. That doesn't even account for the primary killers of old
| culture: mildew, insects, rot, loss, indifference, repurposing.
|
| It's a miracle when any old culture survives. It's a good
| thing.
| monsieurgaufre wrote:
| While i somewhat agree with you, i do not share your
| optimism. We already have lots of information to prevent from
| repeating errors from the past. Yet, more than i'd like seem
| to creep out of the shadows right now.
|
| And I'm not even talking about the intrinsic value (or lack
| thereof) of a cultural item.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Yeah, but we still don't learn from mistakes with well-known
| history behind them.
|
| For example, I still hear from smart, educated people that we
| can stop illegal drug use by applying severe punishment to
| the drug suppliers.
| usefulcat wrote:
| It might be that knowledge of the past is necessary but not
| sufficient to avoid repeating previous mistakes.
|
| The fact that some people lack knowledge (whether by choice
| or by accident) is hardly a compelling argument against its
| utility.
| glofish wrote:
| Remembering the past does not mean remember every single
| pointless thing.
|
| Lots of things in the past were not worth the paper they were
| printed on.
| danaris wrote:
| Talk to an archaeologist sometime.
|
| Some of the most valuable finds in terms of learning about
| past societies have been very ordinary things: the everyday
| objects that we make, use, and keep says so much about us
| that doesn't get put into official records.
|
| Archival isn't just for entertainment. It's for research,
| for history, and for remembering and understanding where
| we've come from.
| glofish wrote:
| how about the current era, where every human generates
| thousands of photos per year ... is that a history worth
| remembering and will it help where we've come from?
|
| I am not saying to not study history, I am saying storing
| everything is probably worse than storing half of it.
| ShroudedNight wrote:
| There's a line in an old Time Team episode about how Phil
| Harding [I think] had found one of the most exciting
| things an archaeologist could find: [Totally deadpan] "A
| ditch."
|
| Indeed, the things that make good historical evidence are
| very frequently rather counter-intuitive.
| sonofhans wrote:
| That is a common attitude. Consider also that "worth" is
| relative. I'd burn the Mona Lisa for heat to keep my family
| alive, but that doesn't mean it has no worth.
|
| The writer & engraver William Blake, one of the most
| influential artists of the last few centuries, was so poor
| that he had to melt down his copper printing plates once
| he'd used them. He couldn't afford to buy more copper.
| Blake's technique was unique in all of printing, and a
| little insane, and fantastically detailed. Having all his
| original plates would be glorious.
|
| So was it that those plates were worth nothing? Not at all.
| He had to feed his family.
|
| And note that no one -- no one at all -- is arguing to
| "remember every single pointless thing." That's a straw
| man. You'll have better discussions if you avoid such
| things.
| glofish wrote:
| Imagine that Mona Lisa was lost shortly after its
| creation ... do you think we would not have something
| else like Mona Lisa in its place?
|
| Society created the value of Mona Lisa out of nothing. It
| is not such a unique thing - there are tens of thousands
| of paintings that could be just as valuable.
| jpollock wrote:
| Lots of things have been lost because people didn't
| consider them worth paper.
|
| What is important ends up being very strange. Ephemera
| become _very_ important.
|
| For example, how did women care for their hair during
| Victorian times? Did they wash their hair? What with? Lye
| soap is really strong, and they didn't have detergent based
| shampoos.
|
| So, what did they use?
|
| That example came to mind because it was the focus of one
| of the "live a while in the shoes of someone from time X"
| on TV. It was a huge thing for the women of the house to be
| able to care for their hair, and no one knew how it was
| done!
|
| What we consider useless to keep now may become extremely
| important to a future historian.
| pizzaknife wrote:
| "Yellow Journalism" - a contemporary appreciation might
| have gone a long way
| randmeerkat wrote:
| > The primary function of culture is to pass knowledge and
| habits to the next generation.
|
| At first glance this makes sense, but then if that was really
| the case, why are we losing cultural artifacts and not
| protecting them..? Why is copyright law continuing to be
| weaponized to such an extent..? Maybe what culture "was" has
| changed and modern culture is just one of ownership and
| consumerism.
| libraryatnight wrote:
| I don't know that I'd argue - in the case of cultural artifacts
| - that time is a quality filter. I'm certainly glad that it
| seems as much good stuff survives as we have, but we also find
| lots of interesting things after the fact and in spite of
| ourselves. We make a decent attempt at archiving things of
| cultural significance so far as we can assess such things in
| our own time is about as generous as I'd get.
|
| Also it's a weird idea that we should forget things so that
| someone later can feel special when they do it again. Really
| weird.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| In music, at least, I've reluctantly concluded that time is
| an almost infallible judge. I'm a violist, and we have very
| little repertoire, so we're always excited when we discover a
| viola piece among the works of a forgotten or little-known
| composer from the 19th century or earlier, but almost
| invariably, it's either mediocre or outright trash. Zelter,
| Sitt, Ritter, Zitterbart, Firket, Rougnon, -- it sounds like
| I'm making these names up, but I'm not -- mediocrities all.
| As a professor of mine was fond of pointing out to me,
| "There's a reason we haven't heard _x_," where _x_ is the new
| find of the day.
| hedora wrote:
| I think that was more true when less stuff was being
| produced, and the cost of keeping a copy was non-zero.
|
| Those things stopped being true ~ 100 years ago, so now we
| end up with strange filters. For example, a large number of
| high-value film masters were lost in a single warehouse
| fire. (Arguably, shorter copyright terms would have
| prevented that, since distributors and fans would have had
| geographically distributed backups that the film studio had
| little financial incentive to maintain).
| JasonFruit wrote:
| Those are all good points.
| WalterBright wrote:
| As a musician, perhaps you can answer this for me.
|
| It seems that people who play a guitar try their hand at
| composing music. But the people who play violins and other
| orchestral instruments appear to be satisfied playing other
| peoples' compositions.
|
| Why is that? Have you tried to compose new viola pieces?
| tzs wrote:
| I don't play viola or any other orchestra instrument, but
| do play some guitar, so much of this is just a guess.
|
| I'd guess that a big factor is that guitar is a good solo
| instrument. It can do melody and chords well. You can get
| a good full sounding piece of music out of a guitar. Also
| if you want you can sing while you play so it works great
| if you want to add words to your composition.
|
| Most orchestra instruments don't really work nearly as
| well solo. Yes, many classical pieces include solos for
| various instruments but those solos are meant to be in
| the context of the orchestra or string quartet or
| whatever. If all you've got is a lone violinist while
| that can be beautify it is not going to have the richness
| that you can get from a lone guitar (or a lone piano).
| Also for many orchestra instruments singing while playing
| them might be hard or annoying.
|
| So if I want to try composing for my guitar, I only have
| to get good enough at composing to compose decent guitar
| music.
|
| A violist would probably need to get good enough to
| compose for viola and for at least the rest of a string
| quartet.
| WalterBright wrote:
| While it's true you cannot sing while playing the
| trumpet, Herp Alpert could make his trumpet sing!
|
| But still, he played covers of other peoples' songs.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| I do compose and make arrangements -- and am firmly a
| mediocrity. In fact, lots of the great composers were
| violists: Bach, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Britten, Dvorak,
| and others. Most of them also played a keyboard
| instrument, which is a useful tool for a composer, but a
| violist is perfectly placed to understand the orchestra
| as a whole, and is usually not saddled with too difficult
| a part, so they can spare some attention.
|
| Also, violinists who composed were very common, but their
| works tend to display skill rather than profundity.
| Paganini is a good example: delightful melody, amazing
| technical displays, but not a lot to sink your teeth
| into.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| I think it's a genre thing. I bet you can find plenty of
| violinists, at least, composing music, in the bluegrass
| scene, for example.
|
| Instruments that rarely feature as regular parts of more
| folk-derived genres, sure, probably not so much. Viola,
| French Horn, that kind of thing.
| glofish wrote:
| > Also it's a weird idea that we should forget things so that
| someone later can feel special when they do it again. Really
| weird.
|
| What would you think of a service, that when you take a
| photograph that is beautiful, unique and moving for you and
| say you want to share it with someone else - would pop in and
| would should an image just like it - only a better with some
| additional elements that make it even more breathtaking -
| taken by someone else and would recommend you to send that
|
| wouldn't you prefer to have your own emotions?
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Stoker's widow won a lawsuit and all of the copies of
| _Nosferatu_ were destroyed. Well, all but one. Every copy today
| has that source, that accidental source, as its ancestor.
|
| "Bothering to preserve" is a terribly blunt filter. Luck (good:
| a crazed archivist; bad: a nitrate fire) is too fickle to
| select for the best.
|
| It isn't just the films themselves: often, we have no sense of
| a given actor's career. We know that they had a huge impact at
| the time, but we have only secondhand evidence of it.
| jutrewag wrote:
| The mistake was letting a widow have a say in anything.
| blakesterz wrote:
| Turns out to be a pretty interesting story, and one that I
| somehow never heard!
|
| https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2011/10/17/dracula-vs-
| nosfer...
| [deleted]
| pjc50 wrote:
| Couple of these "who cares about old stuff" comments on here
| and I worry that this is the dark side of the AI revolution;
| once you're hooked up to the infinite content hose, or Bach
| faucet, you're adrift from culture as a continuous succession
| of works by humans engaged in conversation with one another.
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