With the massive rise in censorship, how do you guys all go about archiving text and images in real life

submitted by deAccount from (self.censorship)

I'm starting to get really paranoid that certain information could be forever memory holed if websites like 8chan can just be taken down without legal precedent. And I'm trying to think of some sort of durable physical storage method non-reliant on electricity. Books can tear at the hinge, pencil can smear, pen can fade, maybe elites will reserve electricity for the elites exclusively etc. Is printing information on paper from a computer then laminating it a sure way of saving information permanently?

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[–]whistlepig 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Books can tear and all, but even books that are just thrown into boxes and thrown into a non environmentally protected shed (no ac) that gets hot, cold, humid and dry many times a year... are still typically quite legible after 50 years or more, depending on the extent of the humidity. Now just throw a book in a box or on a shelf that gets dusted in an air condition building and they should have no problem lasting our lifetimes.

As for printing from a computer it depends on the printer. Different inks and different toners hold up differently. Generally you're going to have better results with toner since that gets baked into the paper. There shouldn't be much fading if the book is closed most of the time. Its mostly light that causes the fading.

Laminating would help, but that is very expensive. I'd think it would be worth doing for a cryptocurrency paper wallet or other thinks that fit on a few sheets, but not a books worth. That gets expensive fast. I work in printing, and vendor pricing for an 8.5x11 would be around a dollar down to maybe 70 cents USD for me. Of course a normal customer would get charged more. At least double that. You'd also want to put blank sheets between each sheet so they don't stick like old photos do.

What I do:

I buy physical CDs so I don't have to worry about backing them up myself. But I've mostly done a pretty crappy job at this. There have several times when I should have archived something to my hard drive and burned it to a CD.

Specifically, I really messed up by not archiving the reddit and slashdot posts and comment threads when the current bitcoin block limit was introduced and the plans for the future were quite clearly discussed. And although there is an archive of that particular bitcoin forum thread, I remember there being more posts than I see there now. So yea... I really dropped the ball.

[–]deAccount[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Thanks so much, this is the answer I was looking for.

[–]useless_aether 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

you will need a lot of storage for printouts! i backed up my photos on archival quality (gold) dvds, plus i store them on a raid too.

optical media should be emp-resistant, but still, they don't last that long, maybe 15-20 years max.

[–]muyuu 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I've always ratpacked a lot but recently I'm trying to be more systematic. I go through fewer stuff because I store most of it and and categorise it as I go. It's always been the case that not-so-popular stuff just vanished sometimes. Recently, stuff gets deleted for partisan reasons but also retroactively altered or decontextualised, which is a lot more insidious.

[–]m68k 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Right click and save on images, print screen and save, or (if in Firefox) right click and select "Take a Screenshot", then "Save full page".

[–]UnrulyAnteater 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I started taking an interest in DataHoarding (one of the last reasons I visit the other site) to archive all the crap I want to read, but dont have the time for. I've found, through DataHoaders and others, numerous useful tools. wget and rclone for batch site/file downloading, a few scripts for file renaming, and a few other scripts for organization/tagging/etc.

Right now, I'm sitting at about 2 TB of documents/books/published papers/political crap I need to sift through. And that's just text-based files. images/audio/video haven't been sorted yet, so no idea what that's at. All I know is I needed another drive.

[–]whistlepig 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I have a lot of the old text file books from the 90's burned on CDs that I still have. Some of which date back to the BBS days. I really need to dig those up and make sure I can still read them and then make duplicates. Going to put it on my to do list. Thanks for indirectly jogging my memory. ;]

[–]blowininthewind 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

could you provide some evidence on that rise of censorship beside 8chan? i really hope wayback machine lasts there's a subreddit called piracy the best way by far to guarantee permanence (the d in acid property) is to....behold, carve letters in stones.

[–]deAccount[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

8chan was the only website I know of to be taken off the Internet, but all the mainstream social media will censor wrongthink. Trump signed an EO about half a month ago to consider them publishers instead of platforms (which they are) and revoke their protections, but he's so senile and impotent at this point that nothing has been done. "Monitoring the situation".

[–]blowininthewind 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

thanks. if you can, please explain wrongthink? the term's definition varies widely.

[–]deAccount[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It means anything that contradicts the narrative set by mainstream media outlets (cnn, cbs, abc news, you get the idea).

[–]Tarrock 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

one of the big archives is getting sued into oblivion by publishers. The wayback machine has been censored before. The mass banning of wrong think on Reddit.