And here’s why public archival is so important.

I would not be surprised if whatever person in charge of the archive, if there is/was one, has advocated for a 3-2-1 solution. But the hoops were too much to get through to have a fucking back up system beyond a relying on random storage company. That or it was someone who’s been in the job sense they converted the tapes to digital and has just been coasting along uploading stuff for the past 20 years.

I hope threesixtyp is livin their best life (IYKYK)

Well… if it’s in a cloud provider with 3 copies locally and 3 more geo-redundant why would we need that?

You’re right, but it is an easy fallacy to fall into.

I keep saying, if this stuff is publically owned works made by the corporation for public broadcasting, put up some official torrents and let the public archive it for free. Mr. Rogers would surely approve of sharing for the common good.

Just because they are called “public” it doesn’t mean they’re owned by the public. It’s a non profit created to produce media for public consumption, but they still have bills to pay, employees, etc.

If they have content for streaming or DVD sales or (probably more likely) licensing to other PBS stations, they need to get income from it to maximize their ability to continue to produce the free broadcasts they were created for.

Mr. Rogers would surely approve of sharing for the common good.

Correct :)

If their funding was 100% paid for by taxes, sure. But only a small fraction is actually paid for with public funds. They have to earn the rest to stay afloat.

There’s that, and also part that’s donations by viewers and sponsors. While they need funding to maintain operational costs I don’t think they have the typical pressure of expecting a return on investment to deal with, so volunteer supported archiving, hosting via things like peertube or youtube without needing to show ads, there’s room for some novel operations that other content producers don’t have.

None of it is solely funded by CPB. This is Nine PBS not PBS. 50TB is very low for broadcast footage so it’s likely a small handful of local shows, and a partial archive at that. For context, a 2000s consumer camcorder tape was 17GB per hour.

Damn, 50TB is not that much to depend on an external vendor, especially for archival purposes. Even I have ~40TB clanker disks shoved on my NAS at home.

On prem forever

On prem is just a fire away from the same fate.

Which is also why you have off prem as well. Both failing at the same time is rare.