Three architectural properties jointly determine long-horizon survival

The survival of an information system over multi-decade horizons is determined by three properties operating in conjunction: (1) distribution of independent copies across independent failure domains, (2) verifiable integrity that does not require trust in the holder, and (3) organizational independence — persistence that does not depend on any single organization's continued governance, funding, or operational continuity.

The three properties are independent. A system can satisfy one without the others; only joint presence produces the kind of resilience that lets DNS, email, BitTorrent, and Git survive across decades of organizational change, jurisdictional action, and budget pressure. Tier 1 hosted storage typically satisfies (1) within a provider but fails (2) and (3). Tier 2 coordinated preservation satisfies (1) at small consortium scale, (2) within consortium agreements, and (3) only as long as the consortium itself persists. Tier 3 satisfies all three structurally, and its resilience does not degrade when any single organization participating in the protocol fails.

The framework is the analytical instrument under which the four-tier taxonomy (M-0001) is constructed. M-0002 is the canonical statement of the three properties; this Claim is the assertion that joint presence is necessary and that any subset is insufficient.

The claim is testable: a Tier 3 protocol deployed in a centralized configuration violates property (3) and produces Tier 1 resilience regardless of the underlying software. C-0016 documents this case via the GitHub-Iran episode.