I'd suggest that in 2019 when bits are cheap and high-quality scanners nearly as cheap, "crappy quality digital image" is a bit of a straw man. Yes, I've seen plenty of barely-readable or practically unreadable scans, but they were made years or decades ago.
What dpi qualifies as not "crappy"? 300dpi? 400? 600? On Sat, Jul 20, 2019 at 8:00 PM Guy Dunphy via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > I'm posting a private email (anonymized) and my reply because it's a > significant issue. > > > >{Note private reply} > > > > > When the scanning process involves destruction of the original work > > > ... But if it's a rare document, or even maybe so rare that it's the > > > last one, then destroying it now just to produce a digital copy > > > inadequate to the aims of cultural preservation - that's a crime. > > > One right up there with genocide > > > >While I agree that making a non-optimal digital copy in such cases, is, > >well, non-optimal (because for _many uses_, the basic information is still > >available, wheras for many important documents, not even that remains), > >there's no way it's "right up there with genocide" - and if you really > >think so, you definitely need to examine your sense of scale, because it's > >seriously defective. > > > > [name removed] > > I agree that when historical documents are lost without even any kind of > digital copy made, that's the worst. > > However I was pretty careful to preceded that quoted paragraph with > conditionals. > > Specifically referring to a case where someone has a rare work, that isn't > in danger of falling apart, and there's no good reason why they couldn't > wait till better scanning methods became available, and they destroy it to > produce a crappy quality digital image. Thus ensuring there can never be > a high quality digital copy and the rare physical original is forever gone. > That's criminal. A high level crime against humankind. Where it's done in > bulk to entire collections, it _is_ the cultural equivalent of genocide. > > I don't care if you disagree. > Could it be that you are upset because you do this (destroy docs), and > don't > like to be accused of being a criminal? > I am sure that the future WON'T take your position on this. They are going > to be sooo pissed, that so many old works were destroyed and all they have > left is crappy quality horrible-looking two-tone scans. > > This is _already_ the case with many electronics instrument manuals. There > are > so many people who think that the physical manuscript is unimportant, and > nothing > matters other than posting a minimally readable smallest-possible-file > online, > with the least effort and so it's OK to destroy the original for > convenience. > > Private reply noted. Still going to repost on the list, as from anon. > > Guy > >