Submission + - Porn as a digital archive model
EZCheese writes: Once again, porn leads the way into the next digital frontier. And where is it leading us this time? According to this researcher from the Long Now Foundation, toward a better archive of digital art: "'I guarantee that a wealth of pornography from the late 20th century will survive in digital distributed form (because) it's a social model that's working extremely well,' said Kurt Bollacker, digital research manager at the Long Now Foundation, a nonprofit fostering several digital-works preservation projects...He held up the adult industry — always the digital pioneer — as one example of a self-selected community on the Web that swaps images and videos so regularly and widely that that activity will ultimately help preserve an archive over years." Also citing MAME and other digital preservation efforts, he advises "Anyone interested in preserving digital art should evaluate ongoing distributed data efforts." Perhaps there are hidden lessons in all that bittorrenting of the Paris Hilton tapes...