A chara, – Further to your previous contributors’ letters regarding vinyl records (February 6th, 8th, 9th), I have been recently reflecting on the precarious nature of our migration to the digital world as the repository for all our cultural artefacts.
This week I stumbled upon an old RTÉ documentary on YouTube, Luke Kelly: Prince of the City, which I enjoyed, but it occurred to me that it’s only by serendipity that six years ago someone decided to upload a copy of this documentary, and by the same token – whether because this particular user allows his channel to lapse, due to a copyright claim, or because the economics change and Google decides to shut down YouTube, it could easily disappear overnight.
The film is not available on the RTÉ Player or officially accessible anywhere else for public consumption.
Had I recorded it from the television when it first aired in 2016, it would have been saved onto the digital box for whichever service provider I was with at the time, with no way for me to take it with me on the various house moves that followed.
Beyond film, like most people today my entire musical library is almost exclusively tied to a specific digital streaming platform.
A couple of years ago Neil Young and Joni Mitchell removed most of their music from Spotify following a disagreement over podcast content hosted on that platform.
Who knows what opaque contractual or legal issue in the future might precipitate the disappearance of other popular albums?
Perhaps most insidiously, most people’s personal and family photographs and videos from the past 20 years exist across some combination of old laptops, phones and storage devices, social media platforms, and “the cloud”.
As we have observed in recent years, there is no guarantee that these platforms will remain in existence – or in the ownership of trustworthy individuals in perpetuity, so what will happen to those cherished memories?
Thankfully a few years ago, spooked by issues of this sort, I began to periodically print batches of photos, and now have a substantial box full of them, just like those in my parents’ house which my siblings and I enjoy dragging out from time to time.
My film and music libraries are still in a precarious state, although I’ve started to buy the odd vinyl and CD from time to time. I just have to sit in my car to listen to them. – Is mise,
DAVE McGINN,
Naas,
Co Kildare.