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‘Doctor Who’ is another example of how decentralized archives (in the form of private copying) can preserve cultural assets. Between 1967 and 1978 a large amount of the material was lost. Other countries’ archives failed by far to fill all the gaps. So the BBC fell back on material which lay in private hands — Betamax tapes, Super-8 screen captures, and even audio cassettes — to complete their collection. The so-called “restoration team” of fans thereby proved themselves extremely useful; many of the episodes later released on DVD can be traced back to the work of these volunteers.
— Decentralized Archive of Private Copies — translated from suckmysocks
