[cogburnd02]

Can't distribution be archival?

Thomas Jefferson: "Let us save what remains: not by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye and use in consigning them to the waste of time, but by such a multiplication of copies, as shall place them beyond the reach of accident."

[zxspectrum1982]

No, distribution cannot be archival because you don't know when someone else will stop distributing. Proof of that is how many torrents have zero seeders and zero leechers, rendering them useless.