fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #5843 ]

[ SECRET POST #5843 ]

⌈ Secret Post #5843 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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03. [WARNING for discussion of IRL war/current events/2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine]

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 12 secrets from Secret Submission Post #836.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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01. https://i.imgur.com/DUDljut.png

Ehhhhhhhhh. Preservation, especially digital preservation, has always been a challenge. But at least when you actually own media, you have a right to take whatever steps you need to take to preserve it, instead of being legally at the whim of some megacorp.

it sure is a challenge, and my hat is off to everyone who can and will digitize VHS or cassette to get "lost" media available again. I have a VHS digitizing kit and right now for the life of me I can't figure out HOW to get my working VCR to connect to a computer to save the digital files.

I'm with you and below anon who said it's about still being able to access something you paid for - fuck corporations who won't give us a chance to own dvds, digital downloads, etc and want us to just rent in perpetuity until their platform collapses.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2023-01-05 01:51 (UTC) - Expand

As someone who just bought a used iphone 11 off my coworker when they upgraded to replace my dying iphone 6s, and who can't fucking transfer some of the ebooks I bought from apple because the rights are no longer available to apple users in the US, yeah, no.

Physical media absolutely breaks down and transferring from format to format ranges from "mildly difficult" to "fairy tale quest," but at least my ownership is harder to revoke if there's a rights dispute.

I think you miss the point of these arguments. I don't mind digital media. In fact, I prefer it to hard copies. I mind having to lease my media rather than own it outright. If I buy an ebook, I should always own a copy of that even if the publisher decides they no longer want it sold on Amazon. (Should be tough shit for them.) In that sense, we were always better off when he owned our stuff outright.

This is my problem with digital media and I 'own' at least a thousand ebooks, most of which don't have print copies. So if the publisher goes 'nah, sorry' I'm SOL and I find that incredibly frustrating. Or music--if it gets pulled from the platform then, well, fuck. Guess I have to re-lease it all?

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2023-01-05 19:04 (UTC) - Expand

I agree! The worst thing is this lease. If I've bought this movie I want to watch it and not to be scared that it would dissappear to the whims of corporations

The thing is that people often go on and on about cassettes and CDs and DVDs like they are the answer. But a lot of people dropped them fast, because they are not that comfortable.

I have shellac '45s that still play fine, on brand-new record players. (Unless the shellac chips off, but we don't talk about that.) And books from the 1850s that are more readable than ones from the 1970s (Even under LED bulbs!).

Stuff that's made to last will last, and stuff that doesn't rely on specific encryption or encoding is a lot more resilient. (A lot of media from the last seventy years wasn't made to last. But that applies many times over to digital.)

I'd rather deal with something naturally breaking down many years later, with some chance and every right to recover it, than a greedy corporation revoking my access for arbitrary reasons months later. If something is important to you, and you actually own it, you can usually take simple steps to minimize the chance of future inaccessibility anyway.

Ideally, digital ownership would have been an upgrade in longevity, but in practice, it's been a lot of bullshit.

There are other issues with "access" vs. "ownership", such as not being able to easily share with friends or return it, but that varies based on the type of content/service (for example, Steam being generous about refunds and mentioning they would let you download offline copies if they shut down, though who knows if they'd stay true to their word). At the very least, I wish the _option_ to own was more common and practical. Streaming services and subscriptions are here to stay, but that shouldn't be the only way to acquire most media.

Eh...on the one hand yeah, time marches on and physical media degrades. On the other, if you have things on VHS there are various ways you can transfer them to digital format. CDs can be converted to mp3 before they degrade, and if it is degraded for some at least you can probably still find a secondhand one and use that. I have binders full of burned fansubs that still work, and if my computer doesn't have a disc drive I can buy an external one. I can transfer my media as many times as it takes and won't ever lose it barring something catastrophic like a fire or complete hard drive meltdown (and for the latter I have more than one backup).

By contrast, when HBO takes a show off streaming it's gone unless the pirates saved it. Amazon can take books off my Kindle, Apple Music can overwrite my own mp3s with different versions. That's a whole different level of unable to preserve beyond simply tech degrading.

This is laserdisc erasure!

we miss it

So yeah, maybe individual medias won't last forever - but I still prefer to actually own what I bought then to pay to rent just to temporarily own it, or have it removed by the corporation that decides you can't watch it 'because they say so.'

Also, cloud storage isn't some magical thing that's immune to fault. It's all on machines that could break - like if a magnetic bonb goes off in the right place that could take it all down.

There have been instances of fires in server buildings that lead to a huge amounts of irreversible data loss. So yeah, might not be the most likely but it can happen.

OP is right, and y'all need to do more piracy.

MTE

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2023-01-05 17:11 (UTC) - Expand

My cassettes from 1983 and my VHS tape of Vincent and Theo dubbed off of Cinemax thank you.

There's a difference between time and entropy taking my media, like it takes all things, and some douchebag deciding that they don't want to pay the artist anymore and removing media from their streaming service and into a vault forever. It's not actually about the physical media, it's about the control.

It really did used to be better though. Vinyl records can last for so many decades - I inherited some of my grandparents' collection which includes rare records from the 1930s and 40s and 50s that are in great condition and still playable as long as you have a turntable. There's a good reason vinyl is outselling CDs now for people really into music: it lasts.

as far as movies go, there are organizations like Criterion making sure that films will still be available in whatever format becomes the most popular in the future.

I'm old enough to remember when you couldn't watch any old movie on demand in your home (I was a child before VHS or any of that), you just had to wait for it to show up on syndication in TV if you missed it in the theater. I do not want to go back to those times.

Meanwhile, I spent $60 on this game and I don't want a fucking platform to decide to remove it from my library and prevent me from playing it.

I don't need all my media to last forever, I just need all my media to last until I die. So, like another 30-40 years tops. Though it would make me extremely happy if Joe vs the Volcano and Lion in Winter both survive until the heat-death of the universe.

And your body's cells are burning through their telomeres, and the universe itself is moving towards heat death, we're all just running a losing race against entropy, the goal is to keep the game going as long as you can. If you cared about your VHS tapes, you'd have bought a used player to play them (you can still get reconditioned used players), and you'd have transferred your audio cassettes to CDs as well as maintained your players better.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2023-01-05 20:15 (UTC) - Expand

Thank you secret maker!

Yeah, no, I remain unconvinced. It all comes down to having to buy the same thing over again and that was already an old joke in 1997's Men in Black.

I borrow almost everything from the library and am happier for it. Let them figure out how to keep up, I'm tired.

I mean, yeah. This is why piracy is important and fundamental. It's the only mean to really preserve media in the long run. This is valid now but it was also valid in the "old age" of floppy disk, CDs etc etc.
I just borrow old stuff (still readable VHS and old DVDs of stuff available only in my country) from friends or the public library and rip them on my external HD collection and share. Like, no shame. This is why torrent and other peer to peer trasfer system exist (not only, of course, but MAINLY). I've done it also with some '70s and '80s comics, but it's not my niche.
I'm a data hoarder and a huge promoter of piracy lol

I vastly prefer owning something outright, versus streaming where it can disappear at any given time, with no notice.

Physical media lasts that much longer, even if the technology moves on. There are ways to preserve it, though few, far between and definitely not cheap, but rapidly becoming more of an option these days.

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