I use 'cheesy romance novel' as the benchmark, as they were notoriously poorly bound with cheap materials to reduce cost per unit to the extreme.

Yes, a human could read the broken pages pretty easily with effort, but one of the niceties about the book format is that it reduces the user burden to such a degree as to allow them to become entrenched in the material rather than the physical good.

>> go buy a cheesy romance novel from the 70s at any local thrift store

Okay, but a "cheesy romance novel from the 70s" is 50 years old at this point. That's...a very generous interpretation of "will wear out in months or years". I suppose it's true that "500 months" is technically months, but...that's not how that phrase is typically used.

Hopefully some will fight the good fight to keep at least desktops with ports long enough in order to allow for a personal NAS and IPFS to keep our docs accessible.

But even a book from the 90s is 20-30 years old at this point. I'm not sure if that fits colloquially with a claim that they fall apart in "months to years". I've never had a paperback book I've purchased fall apart within 5 years (hell, I can't think of a time one fell apart within 10 years with the exception of severe water damage).

I just...have never seen a book fall apart in months.

I have. I had one fall apart on my first read through it. Pages just dropping out of it.

I also recall, as a teenager some years ago, buying a hardcover book from a store in the airport, and realizing that the last 20 pages were the previous 20 pages pasted in again.

Ultimately, the books I cared about re-reading, I've replaced with ebooks. Because aside from the convenience, I don't have to worry about the book's condition, deterioration, mold, et.al.

Although that was notoriously bound poorly.

I've had the binding snap on mass market paperbacks when I opened it the first time. Not exactly a shining beacon of quality.

The oldest hardback in my library is right around 300 years old and beyond a bit of foxing in quite good condition.

The 1898 Report of the Librarian of Congress has a long appendix title "The Durabilty of Paper" addressing just this concern:

<https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015036735036&vi...>

No problems with small books of reasonable lengths. At some point the number of pages in the popular books exceeded the durability of the cheap binding tech in use.

How often have you read them? Many of my most beloved cheap paperbacks from the 80s and 90s have been replaced at least once since they've literally fallen apart as I was reading them. Also books from the 50s and 60s seem to be much higher quality than books from the 80s and 90s.

I'm not saying that your scenario can't happen. I am saying that I would be surprised if all but the most carefully maintained digital library would outlive the cheapest of print books. Keep in mind that, at a bare minimum, a digital library must be backed up and transferred to new media every few years. You may get away with storing digital for a decade untended, but two decades is a bit of a stretch. Also keep in mind that even the slightest amount of bit rot can make an entire book unreadable. While this isn't really true of books stored as plain text, most modern formats seem to used some sort of compressed container (e.g. ePubs are compressed).

I own tons from the 80s, all are in perfect condition. Also a few dozen from the 70s and they're all fine.

I also have a few books from the 1800s, those are hardcovers not paperbacks but also in reasonably good shape.

Keep in mind that bindings often last a lot less than that: One of the reasons genuinely old leatherbound books have those horizontal ridges on the spines is that they cover the (often also leather) laces used to re-bind the book and hold the pages together. This gave the classic works a certain look that was later replicated by publishers as just decorative ridges on the spine - but the origin of the feature was that those leather ridges were functional (they also acted as wear bumpers, but this was a secondary bonus) and a key part of the rebound book's structure!

I'll add one more big item to the anti-electronic book column: It is simply impossible to build electronics that last for decades with lead-free solder. Leaded PCBs will still eventually have tin whisker problems, but the new "green/RoHS" lead-free PCBs always stop working much sooner than leaded ones. Worse yet, no one cares because obsolescence design cycles are single-digit years now. Prior to lead-free electronic controls, appliances lasted many decades: Almost all of my major appliances are over 30 years old now, and some have never been repaired at all! They're a little less efficient, but much cheaper over the long haul, as I'm not replacing them every few years - that makes them arguably better for the environment, too, as there's no waste filling the dump, either...

Real books last centuries. E-books can't. We're a long way from Andromeda's "flexies"...

I have a whole set of ebooks I picked up at a less than reputable site in '11. They're all in pristine condition, all perfectly readable. I have books on my Kindle that are older than that (though not by a lot).

My 5 year old copy of "Edge of Tomorrow" (The LN "All You Need Is Kill" movie tie-in release) is yellowed and the binding is coming loose due to re-reading. The ebook manga I got at the same time is also in pristine condition, and will remain so when the book is long gone.

Ultimately, it's a trade off. Assuming that you have a DRM free digital copy of something and that you're remarkably careful about keeping back ups and multi-site/format copies a digital file could easily last 100 years, just like a well cared for paperback could last a hundred years. At that point, the difference between them is how easy it will be to read the contents. For the digital copy you will need a certain type hardware and software which may or may not exist or be easy to obtain in 100 years, but you need nothing at all for the paperback.

I like books, so I think the best bet is both the physical copy and multiple digital copies in various formats. It's not as if we have to chose one or the other, so it's okay that both options come with different strengths and weaknesses.

There's plenty to worry about with maintenance of both formats, but for paper most of the investment is upfront. For digital it is an ongoing investment, with the benefit of a pristine copy being maintained.

While digital books are also stored on media that can be lost, stolen, etc., the magic comes from storing multiple copies in different places.

I still have a comic book compilation (hard cover) from the 70's right here. The condition it's perfect for its age.

If the pages don't literally crumble to dust, they fall from the binding, especially when actually read.

There are some formats which survive better, but many books will in fact deteriorate beyond readability within 50 years or so.

The math book I'm reading right now it's from the 70's.

You might care to temper it with a balance of rigour in verifying your own beliefs and anecdotal experiences, your haste to dismiss that of others, and as in assessing your own methodology and its potential weaknesses.

I could perhaps have been more clear to indicate that use of acidic, pulp-based paper is more common in paperback publications, rather than universal. The point remains that as a cheaper publication mode, that cheaper publication processes and materials are more prevalent. I have encountered issues with pulp-based decay in both paperback and hardcopy books.

I'd linked an 1898 reference to issues with high-pulp, acidic paper degradation in an earlier comment (also submitted as an HN item). It begins:

The Library of Congress is indebted to the American ambassador at Berlin, the Hon Andrew D. White, for the following copy of the regulations adopted by the Prussian Government for the security of the national archives, and teh special danger involved in printing or writing records on paper made of wood pulp.

Wood pulp is extensively used in the manufacture of modern paper.

Paper made from compositions containing wood pulp decays more or less rapidly in proportion to the amount of wood pulp used.

Such paper is unfit for official use where permanency of records is essential or important.

<https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015036735036&vi...>

The specific issue is somewhat less the wood pulp than acidic materials used in its preparation and their interaction with the pulp. Wikipedia has a good article on the matter:

Paper degradation is a slow process, but it is significantly accelerated in an acidic environment. In the mid-nineteenth century, the method of paper production became popular, in which resin-alum glue was added to the paper pulp.[3] The aluminum sulphate remaining in the paper form, in reaction with water, acids that catalyze the decomposition of cellulose (acidic hydrolysis). In this process, the cellulose chains are shortened, which reduces the tear resistance of the paper, and at the same time increases the cross-linking of their structure that causes the paper to stiffen and become brittle.[4] Parallel to the degradation under the influence of water, the cellulose chains react with oxygen, in result of oxidation the chains are also shortened.[5] Not only cellulose, but also the lignin contained in the paper is oxidized, which leads to the yellowing of the paper.

... The process of self-degradation of paper causes exceptional difficulties in safeguarding the collections of archives and libraries. For example, an analysis of the book collections of the Jagiellonian Library, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Książnica Cieszyńska, the AGH University of Science and Technology and the Cracow University of Technology proved that as much as 90% of the resources published by the mid-1990s (to be precise in 1996 in Poland) have all the features of acidic paper.[7] It turned out that these institutions, established to care for the heritage of the past, are not able to effectively carry out their mission.[8]

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acidic_paper>

As to books published in the 1970s and 1980s, I have, or have had, numerous instances of these in my own personal library, purchased new, which are in the process of or have entirely degraded beyond usability, the latter having been discarded.

Those Spanish examples you've encountered might be a useful foil on which to consider a further concept: survivorship bias:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias>

No ebooks can last more than a decade or two, and even if the files are perfectly readable, you often need a LOT of supporting hardware and software to use them.

Take even a very simple example like a Kindle in 15-20 years time: The LiPoly battery will fail, it may not be able to phone home to validate your DRM anymore, for many reasons: Amazon my have updated the APIs to a form unusable by your old device, your account may no longer exist, the wireless network standards may no longer be compatible or in use (original Kindles already suffer from this!), the charger may be long-gone (or you can no longer find a type-A USB port to plug the charging cable into), the lead-free solder will have developed tin whiskers and shorted out PCB connections, the grid may have collapsed due to the instability of renewable energy or a Carrington event, and in my experience, the microUSB charging connector on the Kindle itself will most certainly have broken, anyway, as they always do (and I'm NOT hard on my devices...) Exactly NONE of those issues will ever prevent a book from providing you access to the information it had from the day of its printing.

Thanks, I'll take paper. *ALL* digital data/info storage is ephemeral. Anyone who thinks otherwise is fooling themselves.

(And BTW, history shows that the fall of civilizations (and their support structures, of course) does happen with alarming frequency. For the last few thousand years, books( (or close cousins like scrolls, etc.) have proven to be as resistant to that sort of thing as possible.)

Actually, several arguments I didn't make.

I'm extremely dubious of this claim. Decades, I could start to believe. *Months*? I've never had a paperback be unusable within a decade. Do you have any citations or data for trade paperbacks wearing out in months?

It's just *so* incongruous with my personal experience of even the cheapest paperback I've ever bought.

My own experience - having a brand new paperback litter pages on my first read. Or buying a book only to find that the last signature was a duplicate of the one prior to it.

I've also had a manga spine break on a second reading, literally dropping a whole section of pages on my lap.

When it comes to reading, non-electronic books are superior in just about every way for me.

But, electronic books do have a real convenience to them that I have to admit. If I'm reading one-handed (holding a baby, eating a sandwich, etc) I really appreciate a kindle for reading. Also, when traveling, the ability to bring 50 books with me on a flight, or camping, while taking up no space is amazing.

But, yea, for the endurance of the storage media, physical books definitely have an edge in my eye.

So when we move to storing archives or cold storage (likely where most books will go) on DNA, information is provided by LLM AI, and all our devices have no ports whatsoever - it's pretty likely that external hard drive will require a lot of effort and money to get the contents out.

Somewhere on an Amazon server I have a couple of thousand Kindle eBooks. How long will Kindle device be around and useable? They may disappear at any moment really.

I have also bought book and publications in other formats. PDFs, Word docs, plain text, epub, etc.

If I die tomorrow, and someone was interested in my literarily habits, they could go to my shelf and find that paperback, put it in their pocket and put it on their own bookshelf.

My Kindle books will be unseeable and untouchable. (ands this might happen before I kick the bucket and I won't be able ot read them either. already a couple of books and publications are missing

All my computer file books on a cloud somewhere or some harddisk will be invisible as well.

If someone took an interest in my laptop to look at my digital bookshelf. of non-Kindle files.

Well, it is a MacBook and strongly encrypted from what I understand. I dont think a future interested person will have an easy time looking at my shelf.

Perhaps I should start gluing thumb drives to my bookshelf at regular intervals. How kong will usb thumb drives be around? How long do they last?

I have a nice collection of floppy disks, computer cassettes (with programs), ZX Microdrive disks, Iomega zip drives, and a stack of backup streamer tapes of different formats/sizes. I have no idea what system they used and what it would take to read even one of them,

I also have some movies in "HD DVD" format and a laserdisc or two. Not to mention a large assortments of memory cards for cameras that mostly contain RAW formats of long forgotten cameras.

All these data storage ideas were sensible at the time. A thumb drive is sensible now. I have no idea for how long it will be.

There's a listing on eBay right now for a USB 750MB Zip Drive. I imagine you could get it working in Windows and Linux without much trouble.

I've got a monitor that supports something like a dozen different memory cards. Memory card readers are incredibly cheap.

All those digital mediums are not lost, and all of those digital files can be transferred to more current storage mediums without any loss in resolution.

You're right that storing important files on your MacBook isn't a good archival strategy. It is a recipe for certain disaster. Its essentially storing your books loosely in the trunk of your car along with your gym bag and every now and then an open case of beer. It's not the place to store things long term, just a place to put things while you're working on them. If your logicboard dies, it'll take the storage with it.

They were really popular back in the day though. They seemed so futuristic, this ultra thin plastic chip seemingly storing your data on these etched gold patterns. It definitely seemed like something out of science fiction. SD cards are so plain in aesthetic comparison.

Maybe a lot of them have a folded page or such, but the content it's readable. Try that with IDE disks from a Pentium II.

But yeah being swiss i know what you mean ;)

While that was certainly true at one time, Unicode text, HTML, XML, and ZIP files aren't going anywhere (or there'll be a collapse of society so thorough that print books are unlikely to survive, either).

EPUB books are basically XHTML and XML zipped up along with any external assets (e.g., images). There are nuances, but a DRM-free EPUB book should be readable indefinitely. You can check this out by unzipping the EPUB and looking at the files inside with a web browser (if you're doing it from a GUI, you will probably have to change the file extension to .zip first, so it unzips rather than opens in your ebook reader software).

I wouldn’t be surprised if some of those go out of use in a few hundred years, if not much earlier. There will probably be major conversion efforts going on at some point. The alternative, the above formats being maintained for eternity, would be somehow depressing.

They are all-but deprecated though: HTML 1.0 is much different from HTML5 (2014); XML is upgraded to XML 1.1 (2004) and most people use JSON nowadays; and ZIP is very inferior to gzip and 7-zip. We're lucky web browsers are strict with never remove compatibility for old sites, and ZIP is still used by macOS instead of .tar.gz for some reason.

[1] https://www.w3.org/MarkUp/draft-ietf-iiir-html-01.txt

Once something is mainstream and non-perishable, odds of it going away go down and it's foreseeable that it will be around for at least as long as it's already been around.

This effect is super strong in tech, for base technologies, with lots of integrations, especially around enterprise/governmental systems (which don't get changed unless someone makes a strong business case why the change makes more money) and consumer hardware (which tends to linger for aeons since it's so distributed).

Also, several other tiny insignificant Operating Systems like Android(/Linux) [apk files] and Windows [builtin explorer support]. Let's also not forget Java JAR files.

However, the threat of fubaring web media doesn't come from markup (HTML, XML, SGML) but from the complexity of CSS having gone rogue, and JS.

Or DRM. HTML still being used isn't going to help you when its wrapped up in an encrypted blob. We're not there yet (except for video) but you can bet there are plenty of actors who will jump at the chance.

The frame element has been completely removed, the hgroup element is gone, and so is the dir element. acronym is deprecated in favour of abbr. isindex, plaintext, xmp, and listing are all dead.

The attributes border, clear, background and bgcolor have all been removed by HTML, and shifted to be CSS' responsibility instead.

Just moving between EPUB 2 and EPUB 3, you lose the DAISY format support, and external resources. (EPUB2 let you use full URLs to specify parts hosted externally, like webpages, but EPUB3 requires itself to be self-contained. Not a bad change, but still a breaking change.) NCX replaces just using a HTML5 nav element, and a few more things.

All of those things mean that there _are_ technical documents that exist, that _aren't_ readable without some effort to update them.

The main thing is that information which is important to people will get converted to newer formats over time, just as old print books get reprinted if they're popular.

Vs. decent-quality old "dead tree" books, properly stored, can be ignored for centuries and still be perfectly fine.

You might want to ask a good historian or librarian about all the incredibly important (historically, to us, now) documents which we know existed, but we do not have, because there was no continuously-operated, high-budget "Holy Brothers of Document Preservation" monastery doing all the re-copy work needed to preserve them. (And maintain off-site backups in case of fire at the Monastery, and ...)

(If you aren't familiar - most of the materials used for documents in ancient times degrade fairly quickly. Unless (say) carefully stashed in a nice, dry cave in an arid climate. And even that stuff tends to be "crumble if you touch it" fragile.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yongle_Encyclopedia

:(

For every important historical work we have, there are several more, at least as important, that we know we're missing. And presumably even more that we've never heard of.

[0] https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-admin/2013A...

Those are all basically cosmetic/layout related, though. The text itself is still perfectly readable.

I very strongly disagree. The amount of technical overhead required to render a simple zipped XML from some storage medium is immense. Even if you store this on tape, you need a tape machine to read the bits. If you manage to pull this off, you won't get anything useful, because the XML is zipped. Decyphering a ZIP and translating it into bits which only make sense if you know that they represent binary numbers and must be read according to an obscure translation table (UTF-8) which is stored also digitally, someplace else, is more difficult than deciphering the enigma code, the hyroglyphs, and the Inca knot language combined. And even if you manage to pull off this unbelievable feat, you still require a parser, a renderer, a display or a printer to even get close to the possibility for a human to read it. For all of that, you not only need electricity, but the devices required are usually easily broken, and manufacturing them requires knowledge and a technical overhead (and also an amount of electricity) orders of magnitude larger than simply using them. Not to mention all the raw materials required to produce a display, a CPU, etc, which may simply be unavailable to future generations.

Now imagine humankind after a complete societal collapse. Tribe A finds, in some basement that survived the apocalypse, a collection of basic medical books. Tribe B finds, in another basement, a hard disk containing the entire Wikipedia, as a zipped XML file. Which culture is more likely to survive?

There's no way to really plan for it (prepping is a joke) and it slows down progress if we really do it.

http://collapseos.org/

At least the ASCII part should still be easily readable ? But not much of a relief for non-latin alphabet languages...

:-(

Copyright, of course. The fact the Internet Archive hasn't been sued out of existence yet never ceases to amaze me.

http://blog.archive.org/2022/07/08/internet-archive-seeks-su...

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/episodes/on-the-med...

Because it's a library. If you happen to be lucky enough to go there and meet the people running it, it's very clear they are librarians doing what librarians do.

Root it.

Rooting the device voids the warranty.

It's not a reasonable thing to ask the average person.

I’m pretty sure it would depend on the country you’re in . Even if that’s actually the case in the US

And even if it didn’t, it increases the attack surface. Random apps can ask for root, and the average user won’t know what it means.

And even if you know the risks, now it’s much more of a hassle keeping your device up-to-date.

So yes, rooting is theoretically a solution, but it’s not practical in the least.

Most people are not capable (or willing) to own their device to its full extent and take responsibility for it.

For most people "owning their devices" means being allowed to meaningfully change OS (or even just modify it) without losing major functionalities.

It's nice if this is a hobby (and I have rooted my phones in the past), but for the average user (even the average technical user) who just wants to get on with their day without becoming an expert in rooting, it's a complete no-go.

Importantly, it's a very poor substitute for regulations mandating that manufacturers offer us these options without having to go through back doors. I believe that any energy spent on technical workarounds to manufacturer locks is better spent on political activism to enable true device ownership through regulation.

"I want to be allowed to do whatever I want, but if I do something I regret, I get a refund" is not a coherent position to take.

And it should be illegal to void warranty for rooting.

That is those "warranty void" stickers are not enforceable (under that specific law) by themselves, they need to argue that the user actually damaged the product.

I'll just go on 1337x and in 2 minutes I have an high quality mkv that I can play anywhere I want. I'd happily pay 5-10$ a pop for this, and for indie movies I do make the effort of seeing if there's a way of paying to watch it somewhere, even if I just pay and don't watch it there, and watch the pirated rip anyway.

You pirate because you have no respect for law, because you are a entitled child or because you don't have enough money. Piracy isn't plain theft, but it's consuming a service without paying for it to its legimate owners. It's close, isn't it?

Would you sneak into a amusement park? Not pay for dinner if you found it not to your liking or if the brand don't meet your standards?

The reason you think piracy is ok is because you don't associate the crime with the victim.

With digital items it isn't like that. I can make infinite copies at no harm, real or imagined, to the seller. What might make this more clear is the distinction between downloading a movie illicitly versus watching a friend's legit purchased copy with them. In both of these cases, the maker of the content was not compensated for a watch.

The reason I think piracy (defined as personal copyright infringement) is okay is because:

1. It is generally a victimless "crime" (and even this is a misnomer, the act of downloading a movie is a civil, not criminal matter. It has more in common with driving over the speed limit than it does stealing.), and as so is morally neutral.

2. Statistics show that habitual pirates tend to be habitual purchasers as well, further complicating any concept of harm.

3. Copyright is a government granted monopoly, not some natural right, and its continued abuse and deadweight on our culture is not something that should be respected.

4. Even if the previous 3 points were all invalid, why should I have any respect for an entity that has none for me? Slavish adherence to the law is mere obedience, it is not noble or useful on its own.

There already are unenforced (currently unenforceable) maximums on the number of friends you are allowed to enjoy something together with. Beyond that you would need a broadcast license.

There is no limit for the greed of the copyright cartel.

But more than that, you're not even technically correct. piracy is copyright infringement, which is not criminal.

piracy is a victimless crime. you were not going to buy the license anyway, so its not a lost digital sale for the creator. additionally digital copies cost exactly nothing to make so nobody lost anything in the pirated transaction.

These massive companies don't owe you anything. These companies exist purely to extract as much wealth out of you as possible while convincing you that they're the only ones that can provide that service.

It's so convenient that I can pirate videogames, movies, tv shows. These companies want you to keep paying for this mass produced content controlled and influenced by money and what "sells" based on algorithms, social media influence... These companies control and influence you (read: consumers/society) more than we think.

I'd rather see these companies go bankrupt and blown up into a billion different smaller companies than have massive conglomerates control and influence what we see.

If we were to see more originality in the higher-value sections of markets (think indie developers/filmmakers vs companies like EA, TenCent, etc.), then I'd probably pirate less things.

The hyper-optimization of art and culture by these massive companies designed solely to make profit (and the population willing to throw their cash at it for toys, theme park rides, etc.) is morally repugnant to me.

You're damn right I have no respect for copyright law. I want to see it abolished. As far as I'm concerned, copyright infringement is civil disobedience and a moral imperative. These monopolists don't have any respect for our rights either: they systematically rob us of our fair use and public domain rights. So why should anyone give a shit about some monopolist's imaginary property?

The legitimate owners of information are all of us. Copyright is a special monopoly only granted to authors only because it was thought to benefit society as a whole.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170617174641/https://www.alexr...

And that's why it's important to boycott devices and software that allow DRM : Intel and Ryzen AMD CPUs, Windows 11 (requires a DRM chip), maybe Chrome/ium if it doesn't allow to easily disable DRM support, Steam...

This situation sucks. It's as if movie and tv studios (including Netflix, apparently) said "we want you to implement a bunch of intrusive, complicated, wasteful technology that will punish paying users while having little to no effect on pirates" and all the tech companies said "great idea, let's do it!"

I suppose the (self-correcting) endgame is when DRM makes paid media so inconvenient that it drives the masses to piracy.

Think of the alternative: you don't have protection. Who would license their media to Netflix?

I tried prime video once and the way it locked down my computer to guarantee so-called "rights" was stupid. I tried Netflix, same thing. I'm slowly but surely trending back to unabashed piracy because it's the only way I can own anything anymore - and that's sad. I will happily spend hard earned money as long as I can own something. At the very least I'd happily donate to my local library if they didn't spend time enforcing the will of some faceless multinational publisher.

Shockingly, as I've gotten older I seem to own less and every year the apes we elect take more of my rights away.

Unfortunately digital libraries seem to be stuck with ebooks that often carry greater restrictions than physical books while costing more.

A young person near the beginning of their career got sentenced to 13 federal crimes, 50 years of imprisonment and one million dollars in fines, for downloading some PDFs of scientific articles.

It's not like someone asked him to delete the PDFs and he killed himself in protest. His life was ruined to make an example out of him.

FWIW, I actually have a close friend who ended up in North Kern for a couple years because of a plea deal fiasco. For most of us who never directly interact with the criminal courts, navigating such curcumstances is complelty bonkers and stressful, as I'm sure it was for Swartz.

Add to that a young man who might have had some depression issues (I’m not sure) and you have a heartbreaking tragedy.

From the Wikipedia:

Days before Swartz's funeral, Lawrence Lessig eulogized his friend and sometime-client in an essay, "Prosecutor as Bully." He decried the disproportionality of Swartz's prosecution and said, "The question this government needs to answer is why it was so necessary that Aaron Swartz be labeled a 'felon'. For in the 18 months of negotiations, that was what he was not willing to accept."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz

It’s heartbreaking even years on.

The Internet Archive team would need to host one, and then others could join as “peers” to help seed.

https://collab.ipfscluster.io/

BTW: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_World_Archive#Storage_a...

If you dispense with the notion that publishers control that data, it actually becomes incredibly easy to achieve all of this and more. Worried about data loss? Make more digital copies, spread them on more media. Worried about shifting formats? Convert to plaintext, mobi, ePub or PDF - those will be supported in open source software indefinitely. Still worried about files trapped in proprietary formats that you don’t know how to convert? Fire up a VM.

As long as you can get files from under online DRM, the files are safer than ever.

Copyright? I'd pay monthly to access an archive of media older than 20 years.

The books that changed my life are sitting in my shelf and will be offered to my kids one day.

Yes, paper books can get destroyed. I remember spilling gravy all over one library book. That was an expensive book to replace. Plus I ruined all that gravy.

> Does the Internet Archive store redundant copies in many locations? Does it use long-term physical formats?

I'm sure they do. Personally, I'd really like to know what some "best practices" there are in doing this. Other than the digital preservation group at the Library of Congress, I'm a newbie at some of this. And no one else has thought about it.

https://www.loc.gov/preservation/digital/index.html

The state agency I work for has to keep records forever. And they have to be readable forever. You can't have the statutes become unreadable because digital files get bit rot, or folks decide that they don't want to support older versions.

This is pure hyperbole. The one and only challenge is rent-seeking. There already are lots of ebooks from decades before in PDF.