Many years ago,when I was a teenager with no money to buy all the nice magazines I wanted, I came with an idea. I thought how nice it'd be to buy up all the issues of all the magazines, upload online and then charge a small few to read them. Then I started thinking of the logistics of such thing, including how would the publishers react.I came to a conclusion that any attempt of this sort would be crushed by the publishers...
One of the magazines I work for took it upon themselves to render an archive of their print and digital issues dating back to the early 1900s. I think they plan to charge a fee at some point to access them, but they are currently available for free:
It was a very large undertaking—so based on the knowledge of that experience [in which I was not involved], there is probably a business in building a collective, or at least brand-specific, archive for magazines. I'm sure some businesses exist in that space already—but something more user-friendly and centralized access would probably have its base.
