Comment on Is a DRM-Free Ebook always better than a physical book?

nothacking@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

In the moment, yes.

However, the longevity of digital data is problematic. Computers have existed for less then a 100 years, but you’d already be hard pressed to read the data off a deck of punch cards or reel of magnetic tape.

Modern protocols and formats are much more complex, so I’d say that reading your data in 100 years will be harder then reading 100 year old data today. Have a look at a pdf in a text editor. Imagine trying to figure that out once the documentation is lost. (… or stored in the pdf)

Without continual efforts to convert data or preserve hardware and software, the data will be lost.

Compare that to written documents. We have writing that’s thousands of years old, and it’s still legible and understandable. We have paper documents about as old as we’ve been able to make the stuff.

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