6 ms·

They clarify they mean they think they will regret it historically in the sense of losing that part of history, rather than monetarily, etc. But to me this is

They clarify they mean they think they will regret it historically in the sense of losing that part of history, rather than monetarily, etc. But to me this is like arguing a swarm of locusts are going to one day regret that they destroyed so many fields of crops.

dylan604 2y ago
Doesn't the use of the word regret imply that they care?
- quuxplusone 2y ago
  Right, OP is saying (and I came here to agree) that the writer's use of the word "regret" was just clickbait — there's no actual regret predicted to take place except to music historians and the few ordinary people who know what they missed out on. Even the historian quoted says he's using the word "regret" metaphorically: > "They're going to regret it," Seubert predicted. "Not financially or anything, but just from a historical perspective." Music execs are in the business of selling music. The less music is available in the wild, the better for them.
cheeseomlit 2y ago
Exactly, classic case of anthropomorphising a lawnmower. A thought like this would never occur to a record label exec
racl101 2y ago
Highly doubt it. Seems far fetched for a soulless entity to care.
agentultra 2y ago
You're right. They might regret it financially if they could plan past their next meal. In the case of locusts it results in their decline. Music industry has been... not great with licensing and archives. There are recordings of Lightning Hopkins that only exist because of the Smithsonian Archives. And there are re-issues of that music today that only exist because of independent labels sourcing from those archives. If the music industry had had its way they would have been done with Hopkins years ago and his music would have been forgotten, having moved on to the next crop. Books are good at republishing. Film has been decent at it but suffer from licensing issues. Video games are probably the worst at archiving and maintaining access to libraries of prior art. Locusts. Good analogy.
- CuriouslyC 2y ago
  In defense of video games, in a lot of cases technology has churned so much that it's prohibitive to maintain older games, and in general besides the 16 bit aesthetic people are so put off by the look of older games they tend not to get as engaged. AI will improve this situation on the graphics side, perhaps with some sort of game container that emulates older environments well (Proton, anyone?) we'll see more re-releases.
  - Dylan16807 2y ago
    Games that old are super easy to archive on a technical level. Take the 4MB or less and save it somewhere. And "sell small files for $1 or $5 without spending much money to set up the store" is a solved problem.
  - sitkack 2y ago
    Sorry, but you are just talking. The problem with video game preservation is that the IA isn't able to get the same library exemption that they got from the Library of Congress for archiving. The LoC doesn't yet consider video games an artform that can be preserved in the same way as books and other media. There are thousands of folks that both want and want to do this work.
    - ghaff 2y ago
      >the same library exemption Reference please? Genuine question. As far as I know, libraries have very little in the way of special privileges outside of some specific rights in the analog realm which don't really apply in digital where first sale doctrine also doesn't apply.
      - phonon 2y ago
        https://www.copyright.gov/1201/2024/ https://www.copyright.gov/1201/2024/
        2y ago
wmil 2y ago
My favourite example of this is that for Babylon 5 the lawyers from Warner Bros insisted that the showrunners not retain any copies of the digital models because they were WB property and WB would archive them. When they started working on B5 The Lost Tales, WB had lost all of the digital files.
- yapyap 2y ago
  Truly and authentically lost tales
- walterbell 2y ago
  It's sad when requests to official and unofficial archives are lost.
- quitit 2y ago
  This is also a common side effect of corporate policies that favour short term profits rather than retaining staff for the long term. I see this scenario play out constantly: 1. A team or staff member has a project's data located on their user account or hardware. 2. The team or staff member are made redundant when there is a dip in earnings. 3. IT make a backup of the user account/s and wipe the hardware, and because it's older usually move it on. 4. Months or years later that data is needed and at this point no one at the company actually knows where the data is - and even if they find something, they don't know if that's the latest or the full version. Now this wouldn't be a problem if there was a decent overlap in staff retention, but that simply isn't the case these days. Writing better storage policies doesn't help - it's the understaffed nature of their businesses which mean that there is no time for staff to keep up with basic data housekeeping. The types of data that clients should have on hand, but nevertheless have asked me to supply, are frankly embarrassing.
  - NERD_ALERT 2y ago
    What company is allowing employees to have so much data locally? Almost all work is stored in a cloud now. Documents, spreadsheets, design docs, code… If you really are constantly seeing this then that says a lot about the corporation using severely outdated practices.
09thn34v 2y ago
first hn comment i've ever laughed at. lmao. well said
kjellsbells 2y ago
There are three types of loss: destruction, discoverability, and synthesis. Destruction is the one most people think of. The last tape is destroyed, or someone nukes everything in S3. Policies normally save this from happening, bit not always. (I note that lawyers are pretty good at saving things because of discovery, so perhaps corporations should sue themselves more often /s) Discoverability is when the data is there, but noone knows where it is. This is your classic corpo Sharepoint/teams/slack problem. There was a chat, once, with some shared files, from their onedrive, but the last person who remembered where was laid off a year ago and...well, that data is effectively lost. I dont think we have great solutions here except writing even more things down and hoping that everyone follows rules like keeping all files in one place The last case is where the data is located, but noone can vouch for it any more. Internal wiki pages are notorious here. People post about, say, some sharp edge they uncovered, and the page sits there for all eternity. You discover it years later. Can you trust it? Is there anyone who knows why the page still exists? It blocks the synthesis of what you know with what the author knew.

dylan604 2y ago

Doesn't the use of the word regret imply that they care?

quuxplusone 2y ago
Right, OP is saying (and I came here to agree) that the writer's use of the word "regret" was just clickbait — there's no actual regret predicted to take place except to music historians and the few ordinary people who know what they missed out on. Even the historian quoted says he's using the word "regret" metaphorically: > "They're going to regret it," Seubert predicted. "Not financially or anything, but just from a historical perspective." Music execs are in the business of selling music. The less music is available in the wild, the better for them.

cheeseomlit 2y ago

Exactly, classic case of anthropomorphising a lawnmower. A thought like this would never occur to a record label exec

racl101 2y ago

Highly doubt it. Seems far fetched for a soulless entity to care.

agentultra 2y ago

You're right. They might regret it financially if they could plan past their next meal. In the case of locusts it results in their decline. Music industry has been... not great with licensing and archives. There are recordings of Lightning Hopkins that only exist because of the Smithsonian Archives. And there are re-issues of that music today that only exist because of independent labels sourcing from those archives. If the music industry had had its way they would have been done with Hopkins years ago and his music would have been forgotten, having moved on to the next crop. Books are good at republishing. Film has been decent at it but suffer from licensing issues. Video games are probably the worst at archiving and maintaining access to libraries of prior art. Locusts. Good analogy.

CuriouslyC 2y ago
In defense of video games, in a lot of cases technology has churned so much that it's prohibitive to maintain older games, and in general besides the 16 bit aesthetic people are so put off by the look of older games they tend not to get as engaged. AI will improve this situation on the graphics side, perhaps with some sort of game container that emulates older environments well (Proton, anyone?) we'll see more re-releases.
- Dylan16807 2y ago
  Games that old are super easy to archive on a technical level. Take the 4MB or less and save it somewhere. And "sell small files for $1 or $5 without spending much money to set up the store" is a solved problem.
- sitkack 2y ago
  Sorry, but you are just talking. The problem with video game preservation is that the IA isn't able to get the same library exemption that they got from the Library of Congress for archiving. The LoC doesn't yet consider video games an artform that can be preserved in the same way as books and other media. There are thousands of folks that both want and want to do this work.
  - ghaff 2y ago
    >the same library exemption Reference please? Genuine question. As far as I know, libraries have very little in the way of special privileges outside of some specific rights in the analog realm which don't really apply in digital where first sale doctrine also doesn't apply.
    - phonon 2y ago
      https://www.copyright.gov/1201/2024/ https://www.copyright.gov/1201/2024/
      - 2y ago

wmil 2y ago

My favourite example of this is that for Babylon 5 the lawyers from Warner Bros insisted that the showrunners not retain any copies of the digital models because they were WB property and WB would archive them. When they started working on B5 The Lost Tales, WB had lost all of the digital files.

yapyap 2y ago
Truly and authentically lost tales
walterbell 2y ago
It's sad when requests to official and unofficial archives are lost.
quitit 2y ago
This is also a common side effect of corporate policies that favour short term profits rather than retaining staff for the long term. I see this scenario play out constantly: 1. A team or staff member has a project's data located on their user account or hardware. 2. The team or staff member are made redundant when there is a dip in earnings. 3. IT make a backup of the user account/s and wipe the hardware, and because it's older usually move it on. 4. Months or years later that data is needed and at this point no one at the company actually knows where the data is - and even if they find something, they don't know if that's the latest or the full version. Now this wouldn't be a problem if there was a decent overlap in staff retention, but that simply isn't the case these days. Writing better storage policies doesn't help - it's the understaffed nature of their businesses which mean that there is no time for staff to keep up with basic data housekeeping. The types of data that clients should have on hand, but nevertheless have asked me to supply, are frankly embarrassing.
- NERD_ALERT 2y ago
  What company is allowing employees to have so much data locally? Almost all work is stored in a cloud now. Documents, spreadsheets, design docs, code… If you really are constantly seeing this then that says a lot about the corporation using severely outdated practices.

09thn34v 2y ago

first hn comment i've ever laughed at. lmao. well said

kjellsbells 2y ago

There are three types of loss: destruction, discoverability, and synthesis. Destruction is the one most people think of. The last tape is destroyed, or someone nukes everything in S3. Policies normally save this from happening, bit not always. (I note that lawyers are pretty good at saving things because of discovery, so perhaps corporations should sue themselves more often /s) Discoverability is when the data is there, but noone knows where it is. This is your classic corpo Sharepoint/teams/slack problem. There was a chat, once, with some shared files, from their onedrive, but the last person who remembered where was laid off a year ago and...well, that data is effectively lost. I dont think we have great solutions here except writing even more things down and hoping that everyone follows rules like keeping all files in one place The last case is where the data is located, but noone can vouch for it any more. Internal wiki pages are notorious here. People post about, say, some sharp edge they uncovered, and the page sits there for all eternity. You discover it years later. Can you trust it? Is there anyone who knows why the page still exists? It blocks the synthesis of what you know with what the author knew.