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Comment by 1970-01-01 | Hacker News Reader

1970-01-01

True, however these are legal documents and not art for a museum.

Not art, historical artifacts. There’s tons of info that a picture wouldn’t capture. Type of paper and ink used, isotopic analysis, etc. Who knows what questions future historians or archeologists will want to ask?

But you could say that about all trash too.

Even ignoring the historical value, it's easier to hack into a server and edit a file than it is to forge a legal document and break into an archive. Suddenly, you're the legitimate heir to a castle.

If the point is continued legal meaning then it would be better to digitally publish in any way that allows distributed verification of the record as what was published and not challenged.

Probably thousands of people have some means to tamper with that archive, but courts don't really care to revisit hundred year old wills in the ways soap operas imply.

Very debatable, if both are done right.

In practice these are more of historical than legal interest.

That must be why that Bitcoin thing didn't pan out.

Huh? It's very strong at the moment

This argument makes it seem like forged documents were never a thing.

It’s more that the risks and expenditure of effort are so different between changing files on a server vs breaking and entering that it becomes a separate category.

True but scanning them makes it a lot harder to determine if the original was a forgery.

True. You're at the mercy of whatever information was captured at the time using means available at the time. One reason we (hopefully) don't get rid of physical evidence from criminal cases.

Should we then destroy all legal documents, for example The Magna Carta?

Museums aren't just a store of "art", museums are a way to preserve our heritage, preferably in its original form.

That makes the originals even more important.

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