PF: This is the problem: how do you connect into the network, and how do you do it permanently? Again, it’s not an issue of cost, but there are weird hidden costs. Maybe the sanest thing to do would be to lock down a portion of Internet archive, get Wag’s Revue a permanent redirect over to that new URL, because that’s got a great chance of living. Any time anybody searches for “Wag’s Revue,” they go there. Then you hold onto the domain for 5, 10 years, until it’s completely locked in, and nobody’s looked at the original site. It's part of this permanent archive over on Archive.org, although you can no longer assert copyright once it’s in there.

RD: It becomes public domain, or creative commons, or what?

PF: Essentially, yeah. It’s pretty much all public domain in there. So that becomes another thorny issue. You might as well just open it to the commons, right?

RD: Yeah.

PF: You’re never going to extract money out of it.

RD: The thing that you would extract out of it is literally, I think, transformative work. One of the things I noticed about Wag’s Revue since it came onto my radar is that it’s this engine of people being proud of themselves for having found something. Like on Twitter, you’d be like, “I can’t believe no one’s talking about this old interview George Saunders did in Wag’s Revue.” He’s in one of the first issues. Everyone is very proud of themselves.

PF: For finding it.

RD: For having dug it up.

PF: See, because they’re ephemeralists. Sorry, coining words is terrible. It’s something annoying people do on the Internet.