Records survive through deliberate copying. Layer 7 formalizes archival endurance under the doctrine of Legibility as Legacy: digital records must remain decipherable by future readers without requiring the original author or proprietary software.
Thirty-eight percent of web pages published in 2013 vanished into broken links by 2023. Government and news sites suffer rapid link decay; academic citations exhibit a half-life of 4.6 years.
The 1986 BBC digital Domesday laserdiscs became unreadable within 16 years due to proprietary hardware collapse, while the original 1086 calfskin parchment in Kew remains pristine 940 years later.
Rhizopogon fungi deposit subterranean spore banks surviving wildfires for decades; Beal's Michigan seed burials germinated after 141 years. Preservation decouples data from proprietary software.
Layer 7 encodes records in formats verified by memory institutions (Library of Congress), distributes replicas across many independent keepers, embeds self-documenting metadata, and names legal successors.
Derived in Chapter 8 of the Myceloom Protocol series. Each pattern addresses a verified architectural friction with empirical record and executable remedy.
Proprietary software encodings become unreadable as soon as the commercial vendor folds.
Plain UTF-8 text, semantic markup, and open image formats survive for generations.
Core archives MUST use open, non-proprietary formats readable without specialized software.
Single-institution archives vanish when funding ends (like the ancient Library of Alexandria).
The LOCKSS principle (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) ensures distributed archival survival.
Records SHOULD be replicated across several independent keepers and institutional archives.
Data without schema context becomes indecipherable bit rot to future decoders.
Archival packages (OAIS Reference Model) embed self-documenting contextual metadata.
Each record MUST carry the semantic context and decoding notes future readers require.
Unattended digital properties decay immediately upon administrator retirement or death.
Legal wills and institutional trust handoffs preserve continuity across generations.
A node SHOULD formally document its successor steward and data migration paths.
Dead links and reference rot break the web of knowledge and erase scientific evidence.
Cool URIs don't change (Berners-Lee 1998); permanent redirects safeguard citations.
Published addresses SHOULD resolve permanently or issue permanent redirects to successor URLs.
Conformance requirements evaluated in accordance with IETF RFC 2119.
| Requirement | Normative Specification Rule | Audit Verification Method |
|---|---|---|
| MUST | Core archival records MUST use open formats that remain readable without proprietary software. | Format Sustainability Audit |
| SHOULD | A node SHOULD export its datasets in open, standardized serialization formats. | Open Export Probe |
| SHOULD | Records SHOULD be replicated across several independent custody stewards. | Replication Redundancy Check |
| MUST | Each record MUST carry self-documenting contextual metadata necessary for interpretation. | Metadata Completeness Audit |
| SHOULD | A node SHOULD document a named successor and migration path before retirement. | Succession Documentation Check |
Josie Jefferson & Felix Velasco • CERN Zenodo Preprint (Chapter 8 of 10) • Concept DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.24150118
Directly download the formal academic preprint PDF or the uncompiled Markdown specification from CERN Zenodo:
Jefferson, Josie, and Felix Velasco. "Myceloom Protocol (MCP-1): The Heirloom Architecture of Lasting Records (Layer 7)." The Myceloom Protocol Series, Chapter 8 of 10, Unearth Heritage Foundry, 2026. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.24150118.
