Let's develop an open-source media archive standard

Hi Part of the problem here is that if the file containing the archive had any bit rot, most systems designed to read that media would simply fail to read the information. In many cases, it might not even be possible to read the CRC after the error occured. For error correction, one must also realize that one can only correct a single burst of errors that is smaller than a size specified by the correction method. Most of these can at least detect any single bit error. I have been known to recover data from cassette tapes by simply recording all of the data that comes out and modifying the data after the error. In my case, it was machester encoded and, by flipping and shifting the data, I was able to determine the size of the missing data. In some cases, the check sum was used to replace the missing bits. Still, in this case, I was able to bypass the normal code that read the media. I'm not against putting CRC's in, I'm just stating that there are limitations to its usefulness if something is lost other than to detect the loss. To keep from losing things still takes full redundency. Dwight