The internet is insanely prone to losing stuff. What percentage of the first 10,000 YouTube videos from 2005 do you think are still accessible? With copyright and account issues etc issues I would be surprised if it broke 20% and that’s for a website that’s still around.
You can find old stuff due to internet archive and that’s about it. Making the internet basically a giant single point of failure in practice.
> With copyright and account issues etc issues I would be surprised if it broke 20% and that’s for a website that’s still around.
On YouTube there are around 20 different labels claiming to own the copyright to a recording of the Red Army Choir singing the Soviet national anthem more than 50 years ago.
UMG has already decided you're not allowed to embed it on some other sites. Additionally, due to licensing issues, music "owned" by certain labels hasn't been/is not available in the certain countries.
I remember an old webpage, the Spanish speaking clone for Slashdot, Barrapunto. They turned down the servers because they had no visits compared to Menéame, a Reddit clone for Spaniards.
Now you just have a few pieces at the Wayback Machine and that's it.
Now, tell me the digital wankers how much the digital preservation is compared to the books. Even if they used NNTP, I think not the whole archive would be preserved, just ask Jason Scott.
And I love computers, I use OpenBSD and CWM on a netbook. But current media preservation efforts are ridiculous compared to a simple book from the 70's.
You can find old stuff due to internet archive and that’s about it. Making the internet basically a giant single point of failure in practice.