Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

My mind directly went to Laserdisc before I realized you were talking about the generic category 😅.

cd/dvd/blueray doesn't become bad that fast, properly stored they can easely live to 50+ years (except the writeable variant). they are physically etched which helps with longevity.

VHS or other types of magnetic storage is more of a chore, they often don't survive the passing of time.

I read it's more like 20-200 years. But there are differences. Recorded CD-Rs are worst. Burn DVDs if you can. And bought (pressed(?)) disks perform considerably better. But don't expose them to UV light or scratch them too much.

With books it depends on how people store these. They can mold. But if you take care to store them right... I mean there are books that are hundreds of years old. I think books are usually lost to things like a fire, flooding, or people deliberately getting rid of them. Otherwise, printed information will survive for quite some time. And I too think it's the better collectible. And they are fun to use. I like them better than reading on a screen.

Got plenty of CDs older than that, and they're fine. Might happen some day, but in my experience it isn't that bad.

If you store them properly and create fresh backups on new discs every couple of years, they can last a long time.