The moire is an artifact of the scanning or scaling process, and is by no means historic. Removing it is certainly legitimate. That is particularly true since scaling the image can make it worse.
If you are talking about preserving the halftone in an original scan, then yes I agree that it should be preserved. Yet you must also accept that the periodic pattern will have to be removed prior to publishing the image since it will be scaled at some point.
If you are talking about preserving the halftone in an original scan, then yes I agree that it should be preserved. Yet you must also accept that the periodic pattern will have to be removed prior to publishing the image since it will be scaled at some point.