Jay G.

Purges by these large operators have already occurred. Geocities, for example, was taken offline by Yahoo. Luckily a group of internet users called The Archive Team managed to preserve about 650GB of it, although I don't think there's a readily available way to access it right now:
http://www.webmonkey.com/2011/09/dev...gital-pompeii/

The Archive Team has archived a number of other sites as well. One of their more recent projects was Friendster.
http://archiveteam.org/

Meanwhile, Google has an archive of Usenet messages dating back to 1982. While these are somewhat buried within their Google Groups service, there doesn't appear to be any likelyhood of them being taken offline anytime soon.

Part of it is the constantly shrinking cost of storage. A decade ago, it likely would've costs thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, to back up 650GB. Nowadays, a home user could store all that on a $80 1TB drive, and still have room for more.

Of course, the efforts of amateur archivists and socially responsible corporations will likely only manage to save a fraction of all that has ever been on the internet. So while I don't think it'll be as bad as you think, I don't think we'll ever have 100% retention either. And of course, this is all predicated on the assumption that what we want to preserve/recover was put up on the internet in the first place.

Coincidentally, this story is available for free online:
http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_0406/greenleopards.shtml

That's a DRM issue, since Amazon has control over where and how content from it's Kindle service is viewed. For their part, they've stated the mass deletion was a mistake. It does illustrate the perils of DRM usage though.


Elaborating on what filmerp wrote, this is a result of digital grading of films using a DI (digital intermediate). It's affected both movies shot digitally and shot on film. Prior to digital grading, tinting of movies was possible using certain film stocks and developing techniques, but digital grading has made it so much easier that it's become more prevalent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_grading


I do think the more popular blogs and such will have a much higher chance of surviving, since the increased visibility will increase the likelyhood of mirroring and archiving. Ironically, one of the major indicators of a blog's popularity currently is that it gets a book deal.

Of course, Anne Frank wasn't the only child of the Holocaust to have written a diary. The popularity of hers has somewhat overshadowed these lesser known diaries:
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article....uleId=10007952

Mabuse

I am thrilled to be the one to tell you Nick; they found the missing reels of Metropolis two years ago and fashioned a complete version. It's available on DVD and Blu Ray.

Jay G.

While the recently released restoration is called "The Complete Metropolis," this is a misnomer, since it's still missing about 8 minutes of footage.

From Wikipedia, regarding the recently discovered footage and restoration.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropo...m)#Rediscovery
The original premiere of the film ran 153 minutes.

Terrell

Considering digital is far cheaper and easier, this is not surprising at all.

Nick Danger

I own the Blu Ray. The recently found footage had been copied onto 16 mm film (using cheap processing) in the 1970s, and the original reels were discarded. We're left with a scratchy, blotchy print that has the side of the frame cut off.

Mabuse

Yeah, but beggers can't be choosers and all that... If they found Welles' cut of magnificent ambersons on 8 mm would you dismiss it?

nando820

Dude! I hear you. That's an idea that's been bugging me for years. I had so many files corrupt/ hard drives died through time that I think I'm inclined to hold analog media with more longstanding value.

dugan

Roger Ebert chime in:

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2011...h_of_film.html

Mabuse

Ebert conflates home video, consumer grade HDTV, and theatrical digital projection a bit in that article, but he never the less hits the nail on the head (as usual).

I'd never stoped to think about it, but the ascent, victory, and domination of digital media was incredibly fast, brutal, and complete. Look at 1985. 25 years ago the pro-grade video formats all had less than 550 lines of resolution and the consumer grade home video formates were even poorer (VHS, Beta, even Laserdisc would never give 35 mmm a run for its money). No one would have expected those formats to every replace film. Ten years later, nothing had changed. But just a couple years after that HD cameras and broadcast started chipping away at the market. And here we are today.

Celluloid served us very well. Yet the digital victory has been so complete and the death of film has been mostly ignored. I feel like film deserved a dignified death and a viking funeral, but instead it was shot in the gut, left to bleed out, and kicked into the gutter.