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by itsmartapuntocm 1220 days ago
More recently, movie studios regularly destroyed old film to make space for new ones, causing old pictures, especially silent era ones, to be lost forever.

Even NASA wiped the original Apollo 11 tapes to reuse them.

1 comments

This enrages me every time I see it. It's even worse with old broadcast TV, Especially daily serials/soaps. Shit is probably gone forever because the tapes were immediately wiped and reused. >:(

I know a lot of it stemmed from space and budget constraints but the complete lack of forward thinking everyone seems to have drives me bonkers.

I'm glad the Internet Archive exists. This current digital only future is terrifyingly ephemeral.

I really wish someone would give the Archive a massive, multi-billion endowment to guarantee it surviving for decades of operation with no forthcoming income.