The cost to the BBC to keep those pages on its servers is more than $3.99. Just because one guy downloaded all of the pages, compressed them, and then seeded them on bittorrent for a cost of $3.99 to him doesn't mean jack.
Notice that he's not hosting the content in any easily readable form. No, he decided to put that burden on everyone by putting it up on bittorrent. Why isn't he hosting the content? Because hosting a heavily trafficked site ain't cheap.
People were going to lose access to that information, and now they aren't. That's really all that matters. With torrents, the burden is on "everyone" only if they really want to keep it up.
edit: Reasoning for downvotes would be appreciated. The BBC has a long history of recklessly losing valuable data. See kgtm's link to previous yc post on this topic.
edit #2: Oh, okay, I see what's going on. When I said "means jack", I didn't mean to imply that the BBC should spend inordinate amounts to keep the data up. What I meant was: Yes, it might have cost them to do it, but look, like what this guy did, there are other ways to keep the data archived. Hell, I'm sure some people would even settle for a CD archive or something.
As far as losing valuable data, well okay, they maybe blanked a few copies of Doctor Who here and there, but it was not considered valuable at the time, and as always cost was a factor then as it is now, it's easy to pass judgement with hindsight.
This is quite a fascinating topic in itself. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Lost_BBC_episodes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Who_missing_episodes
I upvoted you because I agree about the content, so I can only speculate about downvotes. If I had to guess, I'd say it's probably because you either missed or ignored the point you replied to, which is that the reporting was, indeed, terrible.
Actually it doesn't mean jack. that's my money they'd be using, and from a quick scan of those websites, i'm happy for them to disappear.
For some reason, many people seem to have decided that all data is important and there's an almost fetishistic devotion to saving everything that can be saved. Not all information needs to be preserved for all time.
I disagree, and strongly. Future historians will probably disagree with you too. Even the most inane TV shows can prove to be extremely valuable when trying to decipher the culture of various countries 300 or 3000 years in the past. Imagine reading a trashy romance novel from 1000 BC. You'd learn a lot about the people who lived in that time.
You might counter this by saying that with all the information out there now, we only need to keep the "good stuff". But who decides what's good, right now? How do you know that what you decide is good will always be seen as good? Your personal opinions on the content disappearing are totally irrelevant when perhaps millions of people have seen it or have been affected by it.
All information that is created should be saved, especially since we're able to. Imagine the ancient Romans deciding to burn a bunch of books because it cost too much to hire guards for the library. Ouch.
There are teams of people right now deciding what is 'good' (i.e. what is kept) and what is shredded. They're called archivists, and, using their judgement in conjunction with government-created records retention schedules, they're culling both government and private records. This culled information is removed for a variety of reasons, space being one of the most prominent. By such means is the pool of available primary sources that will form the basis for future histories created by underpaid and underfunded but well-meaning bureaucrats.
Sounds like the same situation obtains not only in the dead-tree archives but also in the digital ones. Sigh. I wish people would prioritize our cultural legacy first instead of last when it comes to funding.
Most of these sites are promo fluff for BBC TV shows. Some are cancelled, some are for news show with little more "content" than "This show next comes on --- on BBC -".
Most of these sites would be dismissed as "marketing" if the BBC were a for-profit company. Marketing for defunct products. The rest is material that's being legitimately archived elsewhere.
If these sites were a special instance of our culture, then fine. But they're not. We don't need every single episode of Eastenders archived for all time to understand culture. A good sample is way better.
These are different times to the classical era. We have a glut of information, most of which, once archived, will never be looked at again, and will only cost money until finally abandoned.
Speak for yourself!
I'm sympathetic to preserving the shows themselves.
Their promotional pages on the BBC site when they're no longer in first-run? Feh.
Note that large portions of geocities are being hosted on the web by various parties, most of whom are apparently using pizza money to do it. Geocities was still in the top-100 websites or so when it closed, and they're probably getting decent amounts of traffic from people trying to find old sites.
Even if there is heavy traffic, you're hosting a archival copy, not a production site, so you can just degrade performance as needed. See often slooow web.archive.org :)
No, he decided to put that burden on everyone by putting it up on bittorrent.
Give a man a fish and he can feed his family for a day. Let the man catch his own fish and he can feed his family and community for a lifetime.
Rehosting it isn't legal either, but then neither is torrenting it.
I've seen previews of suggestions for legislation but no actual legislation for this sort of scenario, can you point me to some.
Making money from something isn't a requirement for copyright infringement, nor even is it the test for commercial use of copyright works.
I've never heard of a "fair use" case on historical (preservation) grounds can you point to one? As for educational use in Europe one generally doesn't have the relatively liberal educational use allowances that one does in the USA, and from hazy memory I think that the USA legislation does tie down quite well what is educational use. Certainly unlicensed redistribution except on the most de minimis basis wouldn't get a pass as fair use for education.
IANA(IP)L and am a little out of touch wrt the latest legislative efforts.
---
OT rant:
Just recently it's interesting but all my posts in which I've tried to appraise people of copyright legislation or at least the potential threat of such have been modded down substantially. I have pretty strong views contrary to the current established laws myself, FWIW, but I feel that even if you're an anarchic dissident it's important to know the laws one is fighting against. Clearly others here disagree that reminders about demands of IP legislation are worthwhile for this type of forum.
Since you seem like you may be interested: looked at http://www.groklaw.net before? They've had quite a bit of activity on IP laws, last time I checked (as has the rest of the internet, but still).