Scanning question (Is destruction of old tech docs a moral crime?)

I'm posting a private email (anonymized) and my reply because it's a significant issue. I agree that when historical documents are lost without even any kind of digital copy made, that's the worst. However I was pretty careful to preceded that quoted paragraph with conditionals. Specifically referring to a case where someone has a rare work, that isn't in danger of falling apart, and there's no good reason why they couldn't wait till better scanning methods became available, and they destroy it to produce a crappy quality digital image. Thus ensuring there can never be a high quality digital copy and the rare physical original is forever gone. That's criminal. A high level crime against humankind. Where it's done in bulk to entire collections, it _is_ the cultural equivalent of genocide. I don't care if you disagree. Could it be that you are upset because you do this (destroy docs), and don't like to be accused of being a criminal? I am sure that the future WON'T take your position on this. They are going to be sooo pissed, that so many old works were destroyed and all they have left is crappy quality horrible-looking two-tone scans. This is _already_ the case with many electronics instrument manuals. There are so many people who think that the physical manuscript is unimportant, and nothing matters other than posting a minimally readable smallest-possible-file online, with the least effort and so it's OK to destroy the original for convenience. Private reply noted. Still going to repost on the list, as from anon. Guy