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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mordhau" data-source="post: 8492070" data-attributes="member: 7032137">When it's costing them nothing to do so?  I think at the very least it's a good thing to do so.As I said earlier, this is not analogous to keeping a book in print.  There's no production involved and no cost.I tend to think that if they are going to claim exclusive rights to digital distribution then they do need to keep it available.Edit: There's a lot of context here that matters.  It would hard to call the BBCs destruction of old Doctor Who episodes at a time when it would never really have occurred to them that anyone would want to watch them again particularly unethical.  TV was regarded as ephemera that was mostly broadcast once.  If they were to do it now, in the 20th century, when the history of Doctor Who over time is considered of cultural value and importance, that would be very different.Now destroying something is not exactly the same as not making it available, but for practical purposes it's not that different either.  And making something available only to academics working on PHDs on request smacks of both elitisism and a basic distrust of the public being able to handle basic material.Revising an academic text for specialists and releasing a new edition because of new information is one thing.  Revising say "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" to update it to current thinking and scholarship would be a travesty.  It's dated and its historial value is the reason to read it.</blockquote>

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