That’s particularly frustrating since the point of microfilm is that it takes nearly no space to store it, and thus nearly no cost to keep it forever.
I assume we are about to get a big lesson in this with Imgur removing all nsfw images and images uploaded without a user account.
I’m realizing the web isn’t a static thing at all, it’s just some wriggling ever-evolving snake we are experiencing and riding and watching the tail disappear and a new head born continuously. “You can’t step your foot in the same internet twice.”
I miss microfiche.
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.
I hate corporate decisions. If this show lives on, it will be thanks to piracy. Thank the pirates!
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.
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.
Digitizing large archives is pretty labor intensive, plus you need to get specialized hardware and software. All that for stuff only a small minority of people care about, and while funding is getting reduced...
As someone who has been involved in digitizing a college newspaper in the past, it takes quite a bit of effort and well >$10K even with a lot of volunteer labor. (Which may not sound like a lot of money but actually is for a volunteer organization in many cases.) And it's not just digitizing. It's having enough metadata that the result is useful to anyone other than the hardest core historian.
(This isn't to say that it should be thrown out, but that the first step to archiving is to enumerate and cover the costs.)
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulose_acetate_film#Decay_a...
<https://www.nedcc.org/free-resources/preservation-leaflets/6...>
How widely it was used prior to that time, and what filmstock selection practices specific institutions followed I don't know, though I suspect these may have varied.
As for current polyester filmstock:
Black-and-white polyester film has a life expectancy of 500+ years under proper storage conditions.
(From the same source.)