Okay, so I railed against the ways that our culture is disappearing thanks to lots of little decisions that we make.

If you missed that discussion, you can see it here: http://ajroach42.com/document-your-art-archive-your-art/
With an earlier similar discussion here: http://ajroach42.com/we-are-terrible-stewards-of-history/

Now I want to specifically talk about a few methods you can take as a creator and as a content consumer to prevent things from disappearing (assuming, you know, that you view the preservation of the art and media of our culture as a goal.)

Quick aside: You may not value the preservation of our art and culture.

If you don't that's fine, I guess? This post is not directed at you.

I really don't want to have a sixth debate on the merits of archiving and indexing art. I'm tired of that discussion.

Aside over: back to the content.

First:

In my last post, I put some focus on the artists as the first line in archival.

This is because the creator of a thing often (but not always) has the best copy of a thing, and the most variations of a thing, They also have the most legal room to archive a thing.

So I'm going to start by talking about ways that you, as a creator, could archive your work.

We'll get to the rest of it later.

Ways artists can facilitate the archival of their work with a minimum of effort:

- Don't sell or distribute things you make with DRM if at all possible.

Modern copyright law (in the US, at least) says that people can make "backup" or "archival" copies of things they purchase, as long as these copies are for personal use.

If you include DRM on your thing, suddenly that becomes illegal, thanks to the DMCA.

If you want people to be able to legally have a backup of a thing, avoid DRM.