> People make good points about how digital media is ephemeral
I wonder what will happen to all of the digital-only movies and tv shows being made today. Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and others are all making stuff that you can't buy on physical media and so if they decide that something shouldn't be available anymore, then it won't be.
> I wonder what will happen to all of the digital-only movies and tv shows being made today
Why do you feel digital media can't be preserved?
There are DVD renditions of old media. Cassettes were popular at one time only to be supplanted by newer technologies and it will be the same for current media formats.
To cite an example, I used to listen to cassette music while growing up and was hugely fond of them (Walkman, anybody?) That was then supplanted by digital mp3 players, and now streaming over the internet.
If something is worth preserving, newer technology will make sure it is!
There are DVD renditions of old media. Cassettes were popular at one time only to be supplanted by newer technologies and it will be the same for current media formats.
There are thousands (at least) of movies that existed on VHS that never made it to DVD, or streaming. They have effectively been lost.
The same is true for audio. Lots of records never made the transition to cassettes. Lots of cassettes never made it to CD. Lots of CD's never made it to digital.
Just this morning I remembered a song I used to like a lot as a teen-ager. I looked for it on Amazon, iTunes, all of the streaming services, and it no longer exists. A general Googling shows there are plenty of re-makes by other artists years later. I managed to find one copy of the vinyl single on fleaBay, so I bought it. But effectively, this song no longer exists for the rest of the world.
These things will happen to digital, too, when we move on to whatever is next.
They will eventually disappear. Even though all of them are heavily pirated, they don't stay on people's hard drives for ever. The metadata about them may actually stay alive longer, i.e. IMDB, fan forums,etc.
I wonder what will happen to all of the digital-only movies and tv shows being made today. Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and others are all making stuff that you can't buy on physical media and so if they decide that something shouldn't be available anymore, then it won't be.