I agree. The idea that no one will scrape sites because it is ungentlemanly is ridiculous. Even the idea that AI shouldn't be allowed to train on publicly available material seems a bit thin to me. Not saying there shouldn't be laws or regulation necessarily, only that it is hard to understand the rationale of publicly publishing things and then getting upset when something "reads" them and categorizes them, etc

I don't know about VHS tapes. There was a problem with much of the 1/4" tape in the mid to late 80's I think. I actually had an archivist job in the early 90s where I had to "bake" the tapes in a food dehydrator before digitizing them. Heating them up with hot dry air would temporarily fix the flaking problem, but you had to digitize them within something like 12 hours. After that the tape was completely unusable (it would not only flake, but it would get sticky and completely gum up any deck you put it in). So my job was to bake, digitize, and toss the 1/4" tapes.

You can. There is a new "google chat" app that replaces "google hangouts".