Discarding the hard copy is like shooting Enrico Caruso in the heart
after he's recorded for Thomas A. Edison. While overpopulation
demagogues will celebrate
the empty space created by the absence of Caruso's body, a couple of us
will,
no doubt, miss the original.  Some of us will mourn the original because
we loved his art, moralists will play the death penalty card, and the
technicians will report that we should have waited for digital
technology before we killed him.

Thomas W. Perrin

PS: In conservation, as in medicine, the first principle is to do no
harm.  There
are no exceptions to the rule.