This June, Netflix will make 1,000 movies available for download rental and this is certainly the future of the vid rental industry (sorry, Blockbuster). I’ve just discovered an interesting archive site of films in the public domain, which is worth a look.
Prelinger Archives was founded in 1983 by Rick Prelinger in New York City. Over the next twenty years, it grew into a collection of over 48,000 “ephemeral” (advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur) films. In 2002, the film collection was acquired by the Library of Congress, Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division. Prelinger Archives remains in existence, holding approximately 4,000 titles on videotape and a smaller collection of film materials acquired subsequent to the Library of Congress transaction.
By going here, you can see the archive and either stream or download full-length films and shorts (at many different qualities and file types; download using either ftp or http). The selection ranges from Reefer Madness to Charlie Chaplin shorts from Classic Television Commercials to footage of the bridges being built in San Francisco Bay, even the ruins of the 1906 Earthquake.
Prelinger has been fighting (all the way to the Supreme Court) the over-extension of copyright protections that Congress authorized under pressure from big media corporations, which effectively take every work created after 1977 out of the public domain for over a century. While Congress’ actions have allowed Disney to keep control of their Mickey Mouse franchise, there are now thousands of “orphan” works that can not be published or viewed in any form (free or for pay) because no one can be found to grant permission.
The Supreme Court affirmed the right of Congress to drastically extend copyright even though the Constitution specifically states:”to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts . . . by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive rights to their respective writings and discoveries[emphasis added].”
That used to mean the creator of the work, a person, could profit from their creativity for several years (originally 14) after their work was published. Apparently, now it means the corporation, a legal person, can profit from the creativity of an individual over several lifetimes. There is a move afoot to get the law repealed along with further court challenges to free up these works for all.
No comments:
Post a Comment