You're welcome. By pushing the boundaries you create something with the potential to sustain as more than a throwaway gimmick.
I agree the fragility of content in the online world is.. worrying, if you take a long term perspective. I imagine the licensing of this content is the major risk here, as presumably BT are holding the copyright (even without the legal hurdle I doubt anyone could download the whole thing, without considerable effort).. all it would take to kill it is for BT to lose interest.
If you care about the legacy i would push for BT to allow the data to be shared (eventually), although i doubt this would work (mostly for bureaucratic reasons). If you have access to the work then i know what i would do; make 2 back ups to be stored in safe, separate places, to be released upon retirement, death, or BT losing interest (or ceasing to exist!). As raw as possible (they will have better image editing and stitching in photoshop 2110!). If this were free in the wild i guarantee it would last for at least 100's of years; storing a few TB of data is only going to get easier, and it's cultural/historical significance is only going to increase over time. [hint: do this]
IMO there are few works able to offer the quantity of insight into some aspects of early 21st C life, or the state of London.
These are nice suggestions. I have been considering how to make some of my works Creative Commons in order to get them disseminated more (and also to hopefully make even more money from them)
BT does not hold the copyright. However they do "own" the image for at least a while - they are the client, and we want to keep them happy of course :-)
I agree the fragility of content in the online world is.. worrying, if you take a long term perspective. I imagine the licensing of this content is the major risk here, as presumably BT are holding the copyright (even without the legal hurdle I doubt anyone could download the whole thing, without considerable effort).. all it would take to kill it is for BT to lose interest.
If you care about the legacy i would push for BT to allow the data to be shared (eventually), although i doubt this would work (mostly for bureaucratic reasons). If you have access to the work then i know what i would do; make 2 back ups to be stored in safe, separate places, to be released upon retirement, death, or BT losing interest (or ceasing to exist!). As raw as possible (they will have better image editing and stitching in photoshop 2110!). If this were free in the wild i guarantee it would last for at least 100's of years; storing a few TB of data is only going to get easier, and it's cultural/historical significance is only going to increase over time. [hint: do this]
IMO there are few works able to offer the quantity of insight into some aspects of early 21st C life, or the state of London.