The state arbitrarily deciding that privately-owned material objects are of “societal value” and then confiscating them has a bad history in Romania, and ex-Communist countries in general.
On the other hand, the state deciding that books being forcibly copied (without the owner’s permission) and all copies collected together, turned out to be a great idea:
Private individuals deciding that objects X, Y, and Z are valuable, then buying them at auctions, and sealing them away from the public, to then have them be lost in time and space, is not exactly better.
Digitize as far as possible, otherwise replicate if possible. Then distribute all over the place. Make it accessible, and make it ubiquitous. Any single point of collection will eventually fail. Private collectors are (even) less likely to do this correctly than public actors.
Yes, it’s much better. I’d rather that some artistic objects be lost to time than to give the state authority to take anything it desires. That’s a direct attack on the concept of private property.
Otherwise, yes I agree with the desire to digitize and preserve as much as possible.
> I agree with the desire to digitize and preserve as much as possible.
But if you put private property above all else, then you need to explain who would have an incentive to take on the digitization/curation/archival/distribution work, and why.
Artifacts only command a premium because they are unique. Private organizations, at least profit driven ones, have very little if any incentive to digitize and make something available in the highest quality possible, if they just spent a sizeable amount of money to have exclusive access to it. And that's not even saying something about making it available as a real commons.
On the other hand, non-profit organizations are either largely publicly funded, at which the distinction to "the state" becomes blurry, or privately funded, in which case we again depend on the goodwill of a few rich individuals and on their choices what is and isn't worth preserving, and what is and isn't going to be available to the public. Yay! /s
Yes, the ancient Alexandrian method of "confiscate and make a copy" then return the original to the owner. That seems the most just method all the way around.
