I hope the project can be kept afloat in ways that the US government can't interfere with.
The U.S. government, oddly, is the least of my fears when it comes to rewriting history.
Private enterprise is already doing it, even going to far as to reach into your private library of books and music to change them after you're purchased it:
Until yesterday, I used to sync my music library with Apple Music. Not anymore. Apple responding to the Times reporter with a big fat "no comment" tells me that it thinks it's OK to change things on my computer without my knowledge.
Dahl (or his publisher) changed his own book , the initial back story of the oompa-loompas being problematic. This was 10 years after publishing when someone pointed out it wasn't a great depiction.
But it is weird that they can go into your device and change it now. Don't love it. If they made Version 2 available at the same time....
I have Body Count's first Music CD. I got the day it was released. It has a song that was considered problematic and thus removed in future editions.. But they can't change it on the one I have. The big stink they made about it probably sold a bunch copies. On release day they had one copy on CD and one on tape and I had to ask the person working at the store if they had it. (as opposed to dozen of Bruce Springstein albums released that day).
Yea, I think the argument about publishers choosing to release new, edited versions of older books is a silly one. We should let the marketplace and the marketplace of ideas sort it out.
But, the fact that they changed digital copies that were previously purchased is insane. The companies that do that should be pilloried and shamed for such an action.
Frankly, I’m no longer participating in digital purchases for music, books, or video, unless it’s DRM free and I can move the file to my own storage. I’d rather just rip a CD/DVD and take on the burden of managing that data myself.
Jellyfin/Plex has been super super helpful in making sure I don’t even lose out that significantly on the user experience front.
I am terrified of the world we’re entering where lots of new media will be digital/steaming only, and there will be no way to purchase and archive the “as-released” version of songs and movies.
Digital copies are subject to many hundreds of revisions/changes that you may never notice (most are typo fixing). Even print editions have these types of changes, and some are even substantial (famously, the Lord of the Rings has various changes made between editions by Tolkien himself, mostly fixing typos and minor inconsistencies; but he also accidentally got a revision of the Hobbit that was a major plot change still referenced in LotR itself: https://sweatingtomordor.wordpress.com/2018/05/17/were-tolki...
Some publishers maintain a list of "corrections" - some only update a digital copy on a new edition of a print copy, and some update them as they go. I've done a print-on-demand book at it technically has something like 50 revisions but only one is marked in the book itself as 'significant' - because why not update the source PDF when you can just click a button?
A similar thing is happening with software; DooM has had people carefully inspect the various different versions and patches released; but now massive games are mostly online and version differences are lost to time; even if you know the changelog you can't ever actually experience the old version anymore.
This is different, though. They don’t break into your house, find the book on your shelf, and update it with a sharpie.
The digital corrections and changes are _fine_ if they are opt in. It’s when they are automatically applied, and there is no (legal, tos abiding) way to keep the original file and reject updates that’s… horrifying.
The U.S. government, oddly, is the least of my fears when it comes to rewriting history.
Private enterprise is already doing it, even going to far as to reach into your private library of books and music to change them after you're purchased it:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/04/arts/dahl-christie-stine-...
Until yesterday, I used to sync my music library with Apple Music. Not anymore. Apple responding to the Times reporter with a big fat "no comment" tells me that it thinks it's OK to change things on my computer without my knowledge.