6 ms·

We already have laws for historical landmarks. These laws ensure the protection of things of societal significance, even to the point of restricting the rights

We already have laws for historical landmarks. These laws ensure the protection of things of societal significance, even to the point of restricting the rights of their private owners. We need such laws for the digital realm. If we had them we wouldn't have to worry about Internet Archive, dpreview, etc. Imagine if we had such laws in place long ago. We could be living in a world where Geocities and MySpace still existed, even if only in a read-only form.

TylerE 4y ago
Why should tax dollars be used for this?
- i_k_k 4y ago
  Because government, and the tax dollars that support it, are how we, as a society, take collective action?
  - TylerE 4y ago
    Why is an archive of DPTeview something that is more important than covering basic things like health care (especially mental) that we do terribly at? Why can’t those who care about or undertake the effort? Thousands of nonprofit private historical societies exist.
    - ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
      interesting questions, but since there's no mutual exclusivity in real life, they aren't relevant to the real question, whether taxpayers believe there is value there after all, congress could decide to cover this AND healthcare, they just don't want to do either
- digging 4y ago
  > Why should tax dollars be used for this? Because: > We already have laws for historical landmarks. These laws ensure the protection of things of societal significance
  - TylerE 4y ago
    The Statue of Liberty is an historical landmark. Random Geocities pages are not.
    - ArcticLandfall 4y ago
      Individual Geocities pages are not valuable landmarks, but Geocities as a whole - the aesthetic, the community, the history - is definitely something to preserve. And the cost of saving all of Geocities is a tiny fraction of any physical monument.
      - TylerE 4y ago
        What about the right to be forgotten? I certainly wouldn't want some random geocities page I made as a pre-teen, quite possibly with personal information on it, preserved and accessible for all eternity. Times were oh so much more innocent back then, putting mailing addresses and phone numbers on personal sites wasn't uncommon.
        anigbrowl 4y ago
        Jumping from one argument to another doesn't make for a good discussion. Either defend your initial argument, or start a different argument on the same level as the first.
        digging 4y ago
        That has nothing to do with it. The right to be forgotten is not mutually exclusive with public funding for the preservation of culturally valuable records. No one is saying you couldn't ask to have a specific datum removed, edited, or obscured to the public to protect your personal information.
- anthonypasq 4y ago
  have you heard of the idea of a museum by chance?
  - TylerE 4y ago
    Yes, they involve this thing called curation, not bulk archiving.
    - joshuaissac 4y ago
      Bulk archival is cheaper than hiring a curator. It uses up less of the taxpayer's money.
slfnflctd 4y ago
What's been preserved of the earlier web will always be a little more precious because so much was lost, I suppose. Back in the day, I assumed anything I did online would be saved in some way unless explicitly stated otherwise. I also assumed the same of my software environments. I was, of course, painfully disabused of these notions multiple times before the lesson was fully drilled into me. I'd like to live in a world where everyone was more aware of the value of making special efforts to preserve certain kinds of data (see also: having more control over it)-- like where it's part of our deeper culture. I think we're steadily moving in that direction in some ways, but it would've been nice if it had been more thoughtfully considered by both companies and governments 25+ years ago. I suspect if they'd known how much cheaper storage was going to get, they would have done a lot more.
anigbrowl 4y ago
Laws are only as good as people's willingness to defend them. They are not real. Resource mobilization is a much better long-term strategy than agreements backed by the threat of force, because legislative capture is a real thing and your precious laws can done away with by fiat. It has happened over and over. Please, do not put your faith in process.

TylerE 4y ago

Why should tax dollars be used for this?

i_k_k 4y ago
Because government, and the tax dollars that support it, are how we, as a society, take collective action?
- TylerE 4y ago
  Why is an archive of DPTeview something that is more important than covering basic things like health care (especially mental) that we do terribly at? Why can’t those who care about or undertake the effort? Thousands of nonprofit private historical societies exist.
  - ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
    interesting questions, but since there's no mutual exclusivity in real life, they aren't relevant to the real question, whether taxpayers believe there is value there after all, congress could decide to cover this AND healthcare, they just don't want to do either
digging 4y ago
> Why should tax dollars be used for this? Because: > We already have laws for historical landmarks. These laws ensure the protection of things of societal significance
- TylerE 4y ago
  The Statue of Liberty is an historical landmark. Random Geocities pages are not.
  - ArcticLandfall 4y ago
    Individual Geocities pages are not valuable landmarks, but Geocities as a whole - the aesthetic, the community, the history - is definitely something to preserve. And the cost of saving all of Geocities is a tiny fraction of any physical monument.
    - TylerE 4y ago
      What about the right to be forgotten? I certainly wouldn't want some random geocities page I made as a pre-teen, quite possibly with personal information on it, preserved and accessible for all eternity. Times were oh so much more innocent back then, putting mailing addresses and phone numbers on personal sites wasn't uncommon.
      - anigbrowl 4y ago
        Jumping from one argument to another doesn't make for a good discussion. Either defend your initial argument, or start a different argument on the same level as the first.
      - digging 4y ago
        That has nothing to do with it. The right to be forgotten is not mutually exclusive with public funding for the preservation of culturally valuable records. No one is saying you couldn't ask to have a specific datum removed, edited, or obscured to the public to protect your personal information.
anthonypasq 4y ago
have you heard of the idea of a museum by chance?
- TylerE 4y ago
  Yes, they involve this thing called curation, not bulk archiving.
  - joshuaissac 4y ago
    Bulk archival is cheaper than hiring a curator. It uses up less of the taxpayer's money.

slfnflctd 4y ago

What's been preserved of the earlier web will always be a little more precious because so much was lost, I suppose. Back in the day, I assumed anything I did online would be saved in some way unless explicitly stated otherwise. I also assumed the same of my software environments. I was, of course, painfully disabused of these notions multiple times before the lesson was fully drilled into me. I'd like to live in a world where everyone was more aware of the value of making special efforts to preserve certain kinds of data (see also: having more control over it)-- like where it's part of our deeper culture. I think we're steadily moving in that direction in some ways, but it would've been nice if it had been more thoughtfully considered by both companies and governments 25+ years ago. I suspect if they'd known how much cheaper storage was going to get, they would have done a lot more.

anigbrowl 4y ago

Laws are only as good as people's willingness to defend them. They are not real. Resource mobilization is a much better long-term strategy than agreements backed by the threat of force, because legislative capture is a real thing and your precious laws can done away with by fiat. It has happened over and over. Please, do not put your faith in process.