There’s already a lot of old digital files that no one can read. And “Digital Rights Management” limitations will make future archaeologists’ tasks even more difficult. So says Phil Zimmerman, the inventor of PGP encryption.
“I think intellectual property law has gone a little bit crazy and is counter-productive for society,” says Zimmermann, referring to masses of archives of film that needs to be moved to modern media before it degrades completely. “You need to transfer it but the copyright holder is dead, and no-one knows how to contact the estate.