They do, however, care about their bottom line. So, depending on the mood of the day, so too blows their marketing and branding strategies. If, like in the case of HBO Max and “Gone With the Wind,” complaints are raised about a corporation’s “product offering,” the movie can be removed.

This increasingly means what the public is “allowed” to see by these corporations, is what they get. If a classic American film is deemed to have fallen afoul of the current zeitgeist, then bye-bye. And since the zeitgeist is always in flux, sooner or later, your favorite films will be quietly cancelled. You may miss them, of course, but your kids won’t - they won’t even know these films existed.

This is happening with books, too. As schools provide each pupil with an iPad in the hopes of enhancing preparation for the 21st century, hard books are no longer as needed. After all, the library can just be downloaded. But this makes it extremely easy to pull books from general access. What will the children do, go to a bookstore? A library? Soon depictions of those places will only exist in museums. (Sorry, digital museums.)

We must remind ourselves that the feel-good easy access of today is not promised, and indeed already shows signs of curtailment. We must remind ourselves not to trust in the goodness of corporations (or the government).

Finally, we must remind ourselves that it’s time to move proactively to protect the good, the bad and the ugly of American arts and letters for posterity. This is our history, it must remain accessible for all to see.