This is something that has been bugging me for a while. Every now and then news emerge that a previously piece of lost or unreleased media gets a release, either commercially or as a simple upload to the Internet, and the article's infobox is updated to reflect that, often with somewhat awkward results (at least for me):
"Rude Removal" found by Adult Swim - I mean, Cartoon Network has always had a copy of it, so it's """finding""" by Adult Swim is a bit hard to explain when it wasn't lost... for them.
"KaFun!" found by Mark Marek - again, the creator of KaBlam! undoubtedly had copies of all episodes all this time, so how did he "find" something he never lost?
"A Place with No Name" found by Sony - I mean, really? At this point most people on this website are aware of Michael Jackson's vast vault of unreleased demos, most of which are well documented and certainly not literally lost. So why say that Sony, the company that grabbed the rights to explore this material, is credited for FINDING it, if all that they did was put it on the overpriced deluxe edition of a cashgrab album?
I mean, we all know that "lost media" is slang for "unavailable media", but I still think that we should at least differentiate between an ordinary "finding" where someone not involved with production stumbles upon or happens to have a copy, be it bootleg or official, and uploads it when they realize that it's coveted and sought after, and a case where whoever produced or has the rights to the media in question decides to be merciful and officially release it after keeping it in their archive or sock drawer for years. Opinions?
When did the walking apes decide that nuclear war Was the only solution for them keeping the score? Just wake up Can’t you wake up?
Yeah, it kinda sounds awkward when it's revealed to be "found" by the person/company who always had it.
But I guess we can see it as a broad term. For a while, I tried to rename some articles so that we could make a distinction between media that is truly lost - as in destroyed and even the creators can't find it - and those that are simply not re-released to the public - like cartoon episodes from the 80s; so I would use the term "unresurfaced".
But "unresurfaced" feels a bit loaded and not very communicative... I am a bit more of a fan of keeping things simple to express.