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Archivists are uploading hundreds of random VHS tapes to the internet

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Re: Archivists are uploading hundreds of random VHS tapes to the internet

#71

Post by themodelplumber »

olivermarks wrote: post #70

What is the copyright situation with these tapes? I get the value of archiving and preserving digitally but if I'd invested time and money creating a vhs catalog of titles I'd be unhappy to see them suddenly all over youtube (assuming they had some appeal of course) with no ability to profit from them.

Good question. At least on the surface it seems only fair that at some point, after the archivist has performed a reasonably thorough search for copyright maintenance, the burden of justification then switches over to the (latest?) copyright claimant. "Yes, we have the internet now. Yes, if you intend to enforce your copyright, your claim should be searchable via the internet. Either way you may still have to reach out and publish notice of your claim." That kind of thing.

Kind of like Gutenberg.org texts, with their disclaimer that "we checked and couldn't find any renewal of copyright," or whatever it says nowadays...

Re: Archivists are uploading hundreds of random VHS tapes to the internet

#73

Post by epanchin »

olivermarks wrote: post #70

What is the copyright situation with these tapes? I get the value of archiving and preserving digitally but if I'd invested time and money creating a vhs catalog of titles I'd be unhappy to see them suddenly all over youtube (assuming they had some appeal of course) with no ability to profit from them.

Don't you think 20 years is enough time to profit from a creation? Copywrite law lasts so long, it makes little sense.

Re: Archivists are uploading hundreds of random VHS tapes to the internet

#74

Post by jointpdf »

allovernow wrote: post #3

How does one archive data for long term storage in 2020? From what little I've read, all of the media accessable to the layman has an archive lifetime of less than 30 years before physical degradation- NAND, tape, disc, whatever. That makes for a brittle civilization when the vast majority of our knowledge is stored on media and would be unrecoverable just 3 decades after a global calamity.

It may not be “accessible to the layman” (yet?), but this seems rather intriguing: “The memory crystal is capable of storing up to 360 terabytes of data for billions of years.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/5D_optical_data_storage

Re: Archivists are uploading hundreds of random VHS tapes to the internet

#75

Post by eitland »

zoonosis wrote: post #20
eitland wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems hard to get hold of M-DISCs now. Are they still produced?

I see many listings for them on US Amazon.

Tried again and now I can see them for sale here as well.

Thanks!

Re: Archivists are uploading hundreds of random VHS tapes to the internet

#76

Post by [deleted] »

dmix wrote: post #59
WalterBright wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do what I do - copy it forward every couple years onto new media. My oldest files are from 1977 - proof: https://github.com/DigitalMars/Empire-for-PDP-10 My files have gone from magtape to 8" floppy to various 5.25" floppy to 3.5 floppy to zip drives to cdroms to dvdroms, then to hard disks of ever-increasing size. (My old hard drives are completely unreadable now.) I'm sorry I never kept my punch card decks. I'm sur…

Fortran always seems like such an odd looking language to a modern developer like myself, who's learned a fair share of languages. I want to sit down and figure it out one day given how prominent it was (and still is for many critical systems).

[deleted]

Re: Archivists are uploading hundreds of random VHS tapes to the internet

#77

Post by ris »

jamiek88 wrote: post #69
ris wrote: post #50

Related: rescuing historic teletext pages from VHS recordings of broadcast TV: https://github.com/ali1234/vhs-teletext

WOW! What a brilliant idea! So obvious now, the teletext data must have been embedded into the tv picture thus captured by VHS recording. This got me very excited, I'd love to rebuild the old Ceefax 101 pages.

Search ebay for "used vhs" and start shopping.

Re: Archivists are uploading hundreds of random VHS tapes to the internet

#78

Post by ThomasBHickey »

allovernow wrote: post #37
allovernow wrote: post #3

How does one archive data for long term storage in 2020? From what little I've read, all of the media accessable to the layman has an archive lifetime of less than 30 years before physical degradation- NAND, tape, disc, whatever. That makes for a brittle civilization when the vast majority of our knowledge is stored on media and would be unrecoverable just 3 decades after a global calamity.

Honestly, paper lasts thousands of years. Maybe the solution is microprint and OCR? How long does microfiche last?

https://www.nedcc.org/free-resources/preservation-leaflets/6... "500+ years under proper storage conditions"

Re: Archivists are uploading hundreds of random VHS tapes to the internet

#79

Post by staticautomatic »

andrewstuart wrote: post #41

There would be all sorts of weird stuff on them. Young people probably would not know that watching VHS tapes anything could happen because they got reused. So you'd be watching a movie and halfway through it would suddenly switch over to a shuttle launch or a music video or a documentary or something cause someone decided to record something else at that point. I once recorded a three hour British detective show. I…

http://watch.everythingisterrible.com/

http://www.foundfootagefest.com/

Re: Archivists are uploading hundreds of random VHS tapes to the internet

#80

Post by [deleted] »

einpoklum wrote: post #66
WalterBright wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do what I do - copy it forward every couple years onto new media. My oldest files are from 1977 - proof: https://github.com/DigitalMars/Empire-for-PDP-10 My files have gone from magtape to 8" floppy to various 5.25" floppy to 3.5 floppy to zip drives to cdroms to dvdroms, then to hard disks of ever-increasing size. (My old hard drives are completely unreadable now.) I'm sorry I never kept my punch card decks. I'm sur…

But - and sorry for the morbid question - what about when you grow older, and may not be able to take care of that? Or when you pass away?

[deleted]
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