Internet Archive and the like are great resources, and I support their works, but they are still a "cathedral entity." If they disappear, we lose a LOT! If for some unfortunate reason they collapse, we're stuck with a lot of rebuilding of the archive as a community. Volunteers keeping torrents would not only distribute many recoverable duplicates of the overall content, but will also allow for a quick recovery of the whole.
I don't understand "torrents", and don't need to. They seem to amount to copying and Web distribution of archived content in an active real-time way. Seems to me, there's no shortage of people who are obsessed with copying vintage archives and making them available - their way. Whatever technology they choose to that end, is up to them. That said, others say "I won't bother to obtain this manual, someone else has preserved it". A problem of excess. And access to Web servers has never EVER been cheaper - skip some business lunches and pay for a year. (Funding was part of the original post.) Ask some users to donate some dollars - and we as users *should* make those contributions, to guard against the "fall of the Cathedral". Note: the Internet Archive "is a mile wide and an inch deep". It doesn't save enough, for the purposes of this discussion. Torrents, blockchain, distributed file systems - all "hammers" looking for a "nail", in my opinion as an engineer among other engineers. I'm scanning manuals and making them available, thank you, and I have my own tools. When my "cathedral" falls, the people who got my content, will resurrect it; and I may provide for other "cathedrals" too; and for what was in mine. Thanks for reminding me of this issue. Herb Johnson -- Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey in the USA http://www.retrotechnology.com OR .net