Digital archiving and preservation really is a thankless job. You can try to save as many old 90’s PC adventure games as you can but some bigwig with too much time and money on hand will catch wind of it and will do their best to take you down, so they can keep whatever scraps of pennies they can have from selling such old titles. The Internet Archive is no stranger to issues such as these, and one of their most recent problems has just come to a conclusion, the preservation of music held on 78’s.
If you don’t know what these are they’re essentially what music used to be held on before vinyls. They were used typically around the the end of the 1800’s to the 50’s, what you used to play on a gramophone, and because of their age many of the songs on them are degrading due to the material they were recorded on. As such, digitally archiving them is incredibly important, as otherwise they will be lost to time. However, lo and behold, a lawsuit sprung up in 2023 against The Internet Archive specifically to stop them digitally keeping this type of media. The suit was filed by various music labels and has only just now come to a conclusion, though we don’t know exactly what the outcome will be. Will this treasure trove of digital media be kept preserved, or will it be forced to remove this from the archive? I sincerely hope the former, otherwise we live in very bleak times indeed.
That’s all for now, and as always. It’s not just a game, It’s a Life.