[knaik94]

The internet is big enough and has been around for long enough where both complete loss and complete preservation exists. I am young enough to where I "discovered" the existance of news groups within the last year. More accurately, I discovered the google groups frontend to newsgroups. It's fascinating seeing discussions about things I find interesting from before I was born. Someone has cataloged and uploaded various K-mart, a now bankrupt retail chain, in-store tapes to archive.org . There's traing videos and tapes, and reel to reels going all the way back to 1947. I enjoy listening to the christmas mixes. The internet is not static, but with proper management and motivations, data will stay forever. My local library had a microfiche machine that they took out last year, I wish I got to try it before they did but for the last few years, there was a "out of order" sign on it. It wasn't really out of order, they just didn't want people to touch it.

On the other hand, myspace profiles and Cartoon Network shows are already good examples of losing data. Cartoon Network is especially unfortunate because some of the shows weren't ripped, so illegitimate sources won't help you obtain them. The creators of other shows publicly tweeted how they had to pirate their own show for their kids, because it wasn't available to stream.

I believe the internet is good, but I have also been realizing that I made bad assumptions about how companies will handle data.

https://archive.org/details/KmartDecember1990

[xg15]

I mean, big media companies (e.g. Disney or Nintendo) specifically seem to believe that copyright should give them the right to basically rewrite their own history however they please - e.g. by "un-publishing" old movies or shows when they would conflict with a planned re-release of the same franchise.

That's a desire that IMO directly conflicts with society's desire to keep history. So as long as we have powerful groups that specifically want the ability to erase parts of history, historians will have a bad time.

[acuozzo]

> I am young enough to where I "discovered" the existance of news groups within the last year.

I am sorry to report to you that even chunks of Usenet are missing. Specifically, significant chunks between the UTzoo archive and DejaNews are just... gone? There are posts, for instance, to alt.video.laserdisc to which I can find only replies and not the OP.

[ghaff]

Usenet was never completely saved. https://www.salon.com/2002/01/08/saving_usenet/ (And it's in relatively good shape compared to BBS messages, the vast bulk of which are long gone.) And who knows what has been lost since Dejanews given that Google did its usual lost interest in thing.

[Mistletoe]

Thank you for posting the Kmart tape. I pressed play and I thought it wasn't working and hopped in the shower. Then it started playing and I was awash with Nostalgia and I was in Kmart at Christmas in 1990 again. Thank you.

[the_af]

There are Cartoon Network shows that got lost forever? Wow, that's sad.

[johnchristopher]

Most likely a reference to https://www.resetera.com/threads/final-space-becoming-a-wbd-... and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33010912

[the_af]

That's... horrible. How much does it take to keep streaming the show you already paid to develop? It seems malicious to downright delete it and remove it from the digital libraries of people who purchased the show.

I hate corporate decisions. If this show lives on, it will be thanks to piracy. Thank the pirates!

[bombcar]

Many shows now on streaming services have different music or even parts clipped out, because they only had the license for the song for TV, or for 20 years, or ???

[frameset]

This is already happening in the video game space. Crazy Taxi has the excellent licenced soundtrack removed from its modern editions.

[bombcar]

Poker Night at the Inventory is simply not available anymore as another example (the character license expired).