Norway actually does this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Library_of_Norway
Any and all media published (includes streaming) in Norway is required to be supplied to the national library.
It’s quite neat, they’ve discovered some lost media in their archives a couple times too, this is one example: https://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/33888
Edit: Though licensed content is not accessible outside their networks, can’t stream the latest episode of your goto TV show for free online at home.
Who pays for the storage? Who pays for the servers? Who does upkeep? What about any media that state deems harmful or illegal?
Pirates have been doing a better job keeping media alive than any state of government ever will. Governments can be corrupted. Pirates are a decentralized collective.
Private collections will be how legacy media lives on. Not through some state sponsored bullshit.
The national government pays for storage and bandwidth and so on, financed by pay-per-view. Harmful and illegal material will most likely not make the cut but most old movies, old cartoon shows, old talk shows and interviews and so on will be available to the public.
This is both for entertainment and research, optionally they can make a library card add-on to have it as a subscription.
Current services are all in their own corner and often don’t have old content such as dubbed cartoons from people’s childhood.
Piracy is also limited, finding rugrats in a Scandinavian language is pretty much impossible.
I think you’ve made their point. In your original post you say “all media”. In this one the media has to “make the cut”. Who decides where the line is? Different groups of people have different lines and group 2 could purge all the media group 1 saved because they feel it is indecent.
Is Rocky Horror Picture Show worth saving? Some groups will say yes while others no and when it first came out the no group was a lot bigger.
Pink Flamingos is currently preserved by the U.S. National Film Registry, selected in 2021. If selection was happening even a couple years from now, I have a hard time imagining that happening.
There’s some countries OP’s model could work in. But at least a dual model that includes citizen preservation efforts is warranted (and with it the relevant legislation to avoid it being a criminal act - though pirates gonna pirate, and I love 'em for it).
That last paragraph of yours just made things click for me.
I’ve been wondering what kind of government will potentially do this. While it’s a pretty good idea in general, I don’t think any government will be able to shoulder the costs while earning the ire of the companies (media companies, etc.).
Norway would, and does! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Library_of_Norway
All media published in Norway (includes streaming) is required to have a copy sent to the national library.
Edit: Though any licensed media is only available on their network, sadly no taking home. Though things like news papers are publicly available anything from 2 to 7 days later. (when it’s irrelevant)
This would have been the job of the national archives and/or the national library.
Where I live, the government has a law stipulating that one copy every published material has to be submitted to the national library. I suppose a similar law exists for a lot of other countries, and extending this law to non-print media (like movies and TV shows) shouldn’t be controversial.
Regarding material deemed harmful and/or illegal, I think it should still be collected, but access would be restricted. If need be, access could be restricted to “premises-only” like what is done in a lot of university libraries.
Having this online library of material doesn’t have to mean that pirates have to be stamped out. I think this works best with the pirates keeping the government-sponsored media library honest.
However, what I think would be more plausible is an offline library of all the media that country has produced, with limited off-premises access afforded to researchers and others. That much, I think, would be allowed by the real powers that be.
See that’s where you lose me. Restricting access may as well be the same thing as not allowing the copy to be stored in the first place.
I know all about projects like the British Library. It’s seriously impressive and definitely an important historical archive. It can be burned to the ground and they already don’t allow most people to check out a lot of specific things.
But again I must point out that should there be a war or a sudden shift in political ideology of the government they might decide to destroy or remove certain things they don’t like.
And back to the “restricted access” topic. Who decides what is restricted? Here in a America we are super weird about nudity and sexuality. Other places wouldn’t want their general population to know the recipe for napalm.
I fundamentally disagree with the premise someone else telling me what information I am allowed to see or not. Any version of state or government ran media storage will have those issues.
I mean, yeah, I also dislike having to restrict access, but I’ve just accepted it as a fact that such an institution must face. The decision on those restrictions would fall on the library/archives institution, so long as they are not running afoul of laws. So, I guess in the US, it’d be on the Library of Congress or in the case of the UK, the British Library.
Of course, it doesn’t do a thing to address your concerns, which as far as I am concerned, is very valid. And this is why I think piracy should exist, to keep such institutions honest. Sure, the national library here won’t allow me to research xyz, but other sources exists.
In a more philosophical POV, such institutions existing along with other entities (pirates, or what have you) allows for a check, and provides future historians a means of verifying information.
To be clear, I also fundamentally disagree on the concept of restricting access to information. And I think a lot of librarians and archivists agree with both of us. But for such an institution with such a service to exist, restricting access might be an evil they’re forced to accept.
I guess, to be honest, I don’t think such an institution will be allowed to exist, even with such restrictions in place.
EDIT: Typos and minor changes.
I also dislike having to restrict access, but I’ve just accepted it as a fact that such an institution must face.
You dont restrict access, somebody resiricts YOUR access while you pay him taxes.
Even porn? I’ve had a discussion at work recently about how crazy it is that media conservation often overlooks porn as something of “no value”, so it becomes lost media almost instantly, especially now in the age of streaming.
But I bet that future anthropologists would be really interested in studying it!
Like the old Playboy videos that have mostly disappeared.
How far do you take it?
What services does it apply to? Sure netflix, Disney (hah! Good luck!) Amazon etc.
What about YouTube? It has masses of content, some in the form of movies Or documentories etc, but that’s a lot of content, who does the pay per view money go to? Who is going to moderate it?
What about services such as Patron?( or maybe nebula or floatplane) Some creators charge a lot for content as it’s low volume and they need to support themselves, will this undercut them (without giving loopholes for big companies)
As others have mentioned, what about porn or porn adjacent content?
It would be very hard to implement fairly I suspect and would be full of pitfalls unless you exempt a lot of areas. Banning content exclusivity for certain content after a period of time would probably be more effective (and requiring that purchase is available)
I think porn would have to be on premises at a library with ID confirmation only if it’s published in the country in question. It should be restricted access.
My idea is that creators and publishers will actually gain more money per view than Nebula for example. They can still of course market their patreon on it.
Honestly it was a toilet thought, I didn’t flesh it out completely for every case.
porn would have to be on premises
This is how your premises become sticky
