Mandate & Purpose
Legacy Media Archive is a small, stubborn office tasked with a large, stubborn goal: to capture and preserve the digital expression of humanity – images, clips, television, live streams, game captures, memes, camera rolls, screenshares – and store them in durable formats so that nothing quietly disappears.
“If it flickered on a screen, it deserves a shelf.”
Collection Scope
We focus exclusively on digital-born or digitally-manifested media. The analog world has other guardians. Our shelves are made of drives, tapes, and distributed cluster nodes.
| Category | Examples | Policy |
|---|---|---|
| Still Images | Camera rolls, scans, screenshots, 3D renders | Lossless preferred; context metadata required when possible. |
| Moving Images | Movies, episodes, vertical clips, live stream recordings | Multi-bitrate archival; transcode to preservation codecs. |
| Micro-Media | Looping animations, reaction clips, short posts, stickers | Batch-ingested but never discarded as “trivial.” |
| Interface Captures | Game sessions, desktop recordings, tutorial videos | Stored with environment descriptors when available. |
| Ephemeral Streams | Stories, live rooms, temporary broadcasts | Captured at edge when lawful; tagged with volatility markers. |
We do not rank media by perceived importance. Quiet birthday videos and global broadcasts receive the same checksum.
Storage & Compression Infrastructure
The Archive operates a layered storage stack combining offline cold vaults, geo-redundant clusters, and experimental distributed replicas. Each bit is treated as a citizen: counted, checked, and periodically asked if it is still intact.
Compression Philosophy
We are sometimes described as “capturing the spirit of humanity and compressing it into a zip file.” This is technically inaccurate but emotionally correct.
Our compression profiles favor reversibility and clarity over extreme size reduction. Where possible, both original and normalized formats are preserved.
Redundancy Model
| Layer | Description | Check Frequency |
|---|---|---|
| Layer 0 – Live Edge | Real-time ingestion nodes listening to public and partner feeds. | Continuous monitoring |
| Layer 1 – Warm Vault | High-availability storage for recent or frequently-used material. | Daily integrity scans |
| Layer 2 – Cold Bunker | Long-term offline storage in controlled physical environments. | Quarterly sampling & resealing |
| Layer 3 – Distributed Echo | Encrypted, sharded replicas in distributed networks. | Network-dependent, automated |
Active Capture Streams
The following streams are sampled or mirrored through agreements, public endpoints, and scheduled crawls. Identifying names are generalized where appropriate.
Requests to include or exclude specific media streams are reviewed by both technical staff and ethical advisors. Our goal is not omniscience; it is responsible remembering.
Staff & Custodians
Legacy Media Archive is maintained by a small team of generalists who understand both file formats and feelings. Below are a few of the humans watching over the others.
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Public Change Log (Summary)
This log is maintained manually and may lag behind internal records. It is meant to give visitors a sense of ongoing activity inside a quiet building.
Access & Contact
Direct public access to the full Archive is restricted to preserve rights, safety, and network sanity. However, we welcome:
- Requests to deposit collections or media catalogs.
- Inquiries from researchers, historians, and artists.
- Notifications about endangered digital formats or platforms.
To reach the custodial team, write to contact@legacymediaarchive.org. Messages are queued, logged, and eventually answered by a human.