But hosting it there long-term would still have value even if U.S. users couldn't easily get to it. Access would be legal when copyrights expire and everything becomes public domain.
Therefore, above, long-term means long-long-long-term: enough time for all U.S. copyrights to expire under the current law, which would be about 250 years. This of course assumes no U.S. copyright reform, no expansion of the current copyright law, and that U.S. law/authority/power continues to exist in its current form.
Do you think such an archive could be kept alive that long? Here are some potential issues:
- Literal piracy (e.g. pirates coming to shore)
- Storage of data for 250 years (metal rusts, dvds melt/warp, paper is not data dense)
- Climate change
- Undersea cable cuts
- Nuclear war
- Technological evolution (will networking and storage look the same in 50, 100, 200 years)
I would think: LTO tapes are like 20ish years if stored properly, so you'd only have to copy them 10-15 times over the course of 250 years although that cost/effort decreases over time with ever more modern standards.