In a message dated 12/8/2006 12:00:32 PM Eastern Standard Time, arclists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
But this digresses from sound and audio and especially the subject...so I changed it. ****************
The relevance to sound and audio is that the current recommendation frequently appearing here is that audio archivists piggyback on this vast data storage industry instead of trying to preserve hard media.
The consequences of the mysterious disappearance of a critical fifteen minutes of some politician's or official's life record can be severe enough so that legislation will make the comprehensive and secure storage of digital data mandatory.
Archival sound and even video data files will be a small enough part of this that they can ride along without requiring significantly increases in the systems and therefore at a low cost relative to the cost of development of independent sound archiving systems.
My concern is in the security issues involved in the centralizing of these archives for economies of scale. Imagine a high yield nuclear device smuggled into Iron Mountain in a delivery truck.
If I were young enough to care and had a recording I really wanted to preserve for the rest of my life, I would still record it on tape, or even have a lacquer cut, and keep it under my bed!
Mike Csontos