Of The Need for an Archive

Note: Most of this is NOT from my original thought. They are an aide-memoire of a conversation Antonizoon had with me earlier this afternoon.

Why archive? Why us?

These are good questions. And the short answer is: nothing lasts forever, especially when the government doesn't want it to.

Now I know what you may be thinking. No, the archived content itself is in no danger from the government. Where is it from then? Well, let's find out!

Back in the late 19th century railroads were getting built all over North America. Once the roads were built, the companies that built them could then charge exorbitant rates and, meanwhile, treat their employees like dirt. They could do that because if you wanted to go or ship things from the Midwest to the West Coast, there were only a few railroad companies you could pay to do that. Of course, the rail companies worked together to raise prices because there was no danger of a new kid on the block trying to undercut them. And elected representatives didn't do anything about it because they and their families got free travel to buy their silence.

In 1890, the effect of this and other monopolies caused Congress to pass a law called the Sherman Antitrust Act. In short, it says that anyone who tries to "conspire to monopolize commerce" within, from, or to the United States, as long as it was not wholly within a state (to avoid constitutional objections), is guilty of a felony. That's all there was to it.

Naturally, words as broad as these gave, and still give, judges a lot of leeway. And enough case law to fill whole books has developed for just these four words. Many famous monopolies have been broken up because of this law: Standard Oil and the Bell System for example.

Now the Federal Government is investigating big tech companies like Google, Amazon and Facebook for trying to monopolize the market. Whether you think it is long overdue (I do) or that it is an unwarranted intrusion into companies simply being successful, the truth is that all three companies run major ancillary services for free not because they are nice, but because they can afford to do so. And if they get broken up, they won't be able to anymore.

A great empire can do many things that many small nations, even working together, cannot. For example, in the 1700s kings and nobles, who didn't need to worry about making money from it, patronized art and music, and were willing to lavish huge sums on massive orchestras. Why would a radio station do that today when it can simply buy the rights to play music by one guy and his guitar that more people will like?

The same thing applies here. Today's YouTube ads might be annoying enough. Wait till you see Youku. Videos have 30-second or 1-minute ads you can't skip unless you pay for a membership, sometimes it stops mid-video for an ad, and some videos can only be watched for the first 20 minutes unless you pay. And this is only half as bad as it could get: at least in this scenario they've figured out how to monetize the content that is so valuable, and preserving which is a part of our core mission. Worst case scenario, they could just delete it all. Why keep it? It doesn't make the new child corporations money, after all!

It is not possible, or necessary, to download everything there is to download. We need to pick a few core areas, of relevance to our interests and those of our audience, to focus on, and find a means of storage, whether IRL or online, permanent enough to withstand a further catastrophe like this.

The history of Internet is shrouded in mystery, and a large percentage of its early treasures is just lost because of negligent archiving. This is not a mistake we should make, but if we commit to it, at least we can say that we tried.