I bet in the very long term it's not. I suspect that error correction on digital tape is only meant to address the problem of magnetic spots flipping or fading over time, but the tapes are throwaways as soon as there's detectable physical degradation or disintegration. Contrast with analog tape (or to speak to your point, film) which can be handled in all kinds of crazy ways (cleaning, baking, coating, etc.) in order to get at least a partial or imperfect copy of the original made.