The question is what will stop working earlier: archive.org or the 18th century book?
TBD.
Books have lots of failure modes too. Wide distribution is one way to protect them.
Shift the balance: https://archive.org/donate/
Books have lots of failure modes too. Wide distribution is one way to protect them.
https://archive.org/details/texts
My favorite part: It has actual scans of centuries-old books taken from many major libraries (NYPL etc).
I can read something printed and published in the 18th/19th centuries, on my iPhone. And I often do.