Digital copies are lossless while analog copies degrade with each use

Evidence

Music you can download is digital. Everybody who downloads it gets exactly the same music. If you buy a twentieth-century vinyl record, each pressing by the master copy may be a little different than the next. Masters can wear out. Use of the vinyl recording wears it out over time; not so the digital copy. — Eric J. Heller, Why You Hear What You Hear- An…, 483

Categorization

• XREF: Mirrors Coleman’s social-capital point: reproduction fidelity shapes what gets preserved — ties to information theory’s lossless vs lossy copying.