Losing Digital Movies

[ER]

Many old films have decayed and are lost. Can you foresee a time where an event, either accidental or deliberate or simply the evolution of digital itself, causes significant quantities of digital content, like movies, to also be lost?

[Trevor]

Many old films have decayed and are lost. Can you foresee a time where an event, either accidental or deliberate or simply the evolution of digital itself, causes significant quantities of digital content, like movies, to also be lost?

Definitely see it.

[Archivist]

This situation concerns me, especially with the rise of streaming services and the decline of physical media purchases. I like to have a physical copy of every movie I like, just in case whatever streaming service no longer licenses it. For this reason, I've bought copies of TV shows like Hannibal, which Netflix no longer carries in Australia.

On the other hand, the proliferation of digital media and file sharing means that obscure movies are becoming easier to find, and will still exist somewhere on someone's hard drive. Niche movies attract the attention of collectors, who theoretically invest in better redundant storage. People still trade and download files, duplicating them all over the world. All it takes is one person to upload an obscure movie to YouTube and it becomes available to everyone with an internet connection. And the more obscure something is, the less likely it will receive a copystrike. There are dozens of movies on YouTube that can't be found on DVD.

[Archivist]

For example: check out this fantastic YouTube channel with a huge array of old trailers. So many I've never seen before. Channels like this would inspire people to find the accompanying movies, and the downloading and stockpiling would continue.

https://www.youtube.com/@HDRT/videos

[Jim H]

Many old films have decayed and are lost. Can you foresee a time where an event, either accidental or deliberate or simply the evolution of digital itself, causes significant quantities of digital content, like movies, to also be lost?

Absolutely.  There's definitely been lost content from the early days of the internet.  Cloud backups and huge amounts of storage in it have made that less likely, but it's still not impossible. I can definitely see some smaller films that didn't get much distribution eventually getting lost, especially stuff from the very early days, like shot on MiniDV features.  If they were edited and just put on a couple screeners, and then the creator just never put them anywhere major online, they could easily get lost to a couple hard drive failures or a flood in their home, that kind of thing.  There were still people working in basically regional areas with just some friends sharing with family or at a college, that kind of thing, when putting them online was difficult.  

An example I know of off-hand is James Rolfe, who does the AVGN videos these days.  He made a couple features in high school and college, shot on analog tape and miniDV.  He eventually put them online, but for over a decade they were just on his hard drives and tapes at his parent's house.  A house fire would have made them lost forever.  This would have been films from like 1998-2000.  There are probably other features that never got put online from the 90s to early 2000s in a similar boat, just sitting in storage.  Over time more and more of these will get lost, as even without catastrophe MiniDV tape and HDDs don't last forever.

Major, big budget movies, these days though - I don't think that will happen again in our lifetime, barring a catastrophic collapse of civilization.  They're just in too many different places.

[Archivist]

In Australia, and presumably in many other countries, there is a legal mandate which states that written works published in any given region must be submitted to the State Library and the National Library for their records. They prefer electronic submissions, but will take physical books.

In 2012, there was a movement by the National Film and Sound Archive to extend this to audiovisual material, which would include movies, tv shows, commercials and the like. This would be of great benefit for the longevity of digital content, as it would be stored in a national facility. Now, this does bring up the question of whether a government funded entity can be trusted with everything regardless of political leanings or content, but that's another issue.

[Trevor]

In Australia, and presumably in many other countries, there is a legal mandate which states that written works published in any given region must be submitted to the State Library and the National Library for their records. They prefer electronic submissions, but will take physical books.

In 2012, there was a movement by the National Film and Sound Archive to extend this to audiovisual material, which would include movies, tv shows, commercials and the like. This would be of great benefit for the longevity of digital content, as it would be stored in a national facility. Now, this does bring up the question of whether a government funded entity can be trusted with everything regardless of political leanings or content, but that's another issue.

South Africa has a Legal Deposit Act too: the problem is that most filmmakers ignore it.