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Originally Posted by Giggleton
There is indeed degradation of a digital file, but it appears in reverse....
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The proper term you're grasping for is "enhance," not "reverse degradation."
That said, it is arguable that digital copies will, in fact, outlast paper. Paper is an extremely stable medium, especially when made from the right materials (e.g. acid-free paper). It is unclear what will happen to the exabytes of data that will need to be migrated constantly in the future, lest it be lost.
Similarly there are some who argue that we will lose the marginalia (e.g. notes and annotations in the margins) in the digital age, which theoretically could affect future scholarship.
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Originally Posted by Giggleton
I must say that I believe the act of transcribing a work into a form that is machine readable, either from print to digital or from past digital to future digital adds enough value to the work as to null the previous owner's copyright of the work.
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Dude, that is not how copyright works, and by now you should know it. You may not like it, but copyright applies just as much to a digital work as to paper. The only difference in that respect is that it is easier to infringe the copyright of most digital works than paper -- any more than inventing a device that would make it easier to grow marijuana, in and of itself, makes not make marijuana a better or worse candidate for legalization.