can anything get lost in the internet?

[Cicero]

so say someone uploads a porn video, can it get lost in the deep void of the internet? where it will probably rarely be seen and rarely be shown? i mean the internet is so big, youd think something like that could get lost. how long do you think? in 10 years would a porn video be basically lost? for instances, say a celebrity became famous at 30. would anyone really be able to find a sex tape their old boyfriend/girlfriend uploaded when they was like 20? (say the only memory of that is on the internet and say that the tape of dvd or whatever was actually destroyed. would someone be able to find a video 10 years later? also, are porn sites infinite or do they delete videos after a certain time span? its only an example.

i was just thinking of how big the internet is, and i was thinking of porn stars and thinking that the stuff they do on the internet is on forever. but then i thought tht they probably would get lost and never seen again after a certain amount of years passing. how long do you think until it would basicaly be lost, a porn video?

[Sephtyan]

Well, answering all of these questions requires the telling of a couple facts about the internet.
1) The internet is stored on the hard drives of a mass networks of computers and servers. Servers are the same things as computers, except that they can only store information and allow outside influences access said information. They are extremely large hard drives that stay on all the time.
2) Each internet domain is up to the mercy of that domain owner. If the video in question is a video that is popular enough to warrant being downloaded by a viewer, then it will live on both of those hard drives until both decide to clean up some unwanted space.
So technically, nothing can just get "lost" in the internet. If the webmaster in charge of the domain of the video just forgets that it exists, then it will continue existing until someone comes by and deletes it. Simple as that.

There was a time, back when the internet was just learning how to walk, that developers and programmers referred to anything that couldn't be explained about the internet as "the cloud". Today's cloud is the place where some large company has set up a constantly expanding server for people to up and dump stuff. Back then, if you sent data to a specific I.P. address, and it just didn't arrive, then it was the cloud being mischievous.

[Mortal Coil]

I think I get what you're saying, and while eventually you could track basically anything online, the internet is such a huge place that in a practical situation it is very likely indeed that things would get lost and never be seen again after a few years. It's only a matter of time before Hot Problems is an urban myth and nobody can find it on youtube...

[Hypers]

Yes. Old things will get lost, or sometimes disappear on the internet, such as pages for old products might get deleted or archived. Times also change, so things that were liked some time ago will most likely fade out in the future. That's why we have Google, and the Way Back Machine.

[TheMatrix]

Things get lost daily. You can see a clear example of this on Facebook -- especially those who continually scroll through it on their mobiles. Do you remember everything you "Like"d? Or even what you saw? No! It keeps going, and you instantly forget about that picture as a funny meme comes up.

As for your questions, there is no single building where everything on the internet is stored. It's everywhere, like Usenet. You could run a server from your bedroom, if you wanted to. And you could take anything off at any time, unless you have people who paid you to see it for a certain time. Same goes for other sites. If you're browsing (in your case) porn for free, that company has no obligations to you. They can remove it at any time, without reason or notice(refer to their TOS for details).

[Silicate Wielder]

Well in the point of view as it becoming un-findable and hasn't been deleted, if its a private storage host such as dropbox and your computer dies but you forgot your username then yes that would count as a file being lost in the internet.

[ArsenicCatNip]

It all depends. Based on the situation you proposed it would take a long while for all signs of a celebrity sex tape to disappear. For one there would be plenty of online coverage, Tabloids, perhaps SFW images on said articles.

Now let's say it's a video and the user deletes his channel and no one re-uploaded it. There would practically be no signs of the video existing.

Also I imagine all sites keep their content until it's deleted so like Youtube you can see videos uploaded from years ago.

[Cicero]

It all depends. Based on the situation you proposed it would take a long while for all signs of a celebrity sex tape to disappear. For one there would be plenty of online coverage, Tabloids, perhaps SFW images on said articles.

Now let's say it's a video and the user deletes his channel and no one re-uploaded it. There would practically be no signs of the video existing.

Also I imagine all sites keep their content until it's deleted so like Youtube you can see videos uploaded from years ago.

i mean if that celebrity did the video way beforer they were famous

[justinglives]

Deep!