Y’know I used to think that it was a big enough act of cultural vandalism that the BBC had literally taped over crucial elements of our shared memory just to save money on buying fresh videotape.
-
Y’know I used to think that it was a big enough act of cultural vandalism that the BBC had literally taped over crucial elements of our shared memory just to save money on buying fresh videotape. But today we learn that Paramount has apparently deleted the entire archive of MTV content. Now I’ve never watched MTV and won’t miss what’s crassly destroyed by beancounters but I invite you to imagine them deleting … oh let’s say the entire archive of Star Trek because it’s their property and they can
-
There’s an argument that artistic material is too important to be left in the capricious hands of the people who merely own the IP. It’s why we have national libraries and archives. It’s why the Internet Archive and WayBackMachine were such vital inventions to sit above a constantly shifting, volatile thing like the Internet. “I own it and I can do what I like with it” should not be an absolute. Ownership applies only up to a point because we ALL have a stake in the history of our culture.