FWD: Open Source Films

[KXX4493553 at aol.com]

http://eserver.org/bs/52/prelinger.html

Beyond Copyright Consciousness 
Rick Prelinger 
Bad Subjects, Issue # 52 , November 2000 

Zitat:
"The access problem exists for both copyrighted and non-copyrighted
works. Many public  domain works exist only in libraries, archives, or
private collections, and their custodians
charge for access. Though fees may pay for storage, preservation,
cataloging, and the  production of viewing copies, it ultimately defies
common sense for public domain works  not to be freely available to the
public. "

"The Internet Moving Images Archive is now online and available for your
use.

This noncommercial resource contains high-quality digitized versions of
archival films available for free downloading and reuse.  Never before
available online, these "ephemeral" films document many aspects and
events
of 20th-century American culture and society, including media and media
production, communication, technology, landscape, urban history,
economics,
political science, warfare, the New Deal, and many other areas.  Most
were
originally released as advertising, educational, industrial,
documentary,
amateur or government films.

At present, over 800 out of a planned total of 1001 titles are
available,
all from Prelinger Archives.  All may be downloaded and reused for free,
with no restrictions other than that the films cannot be resold or
licensed
by anyone in their entirety or as stock footage.  Our intention is that
these titles should circulate freely as "open-source" content.

We encourage you to download this material for your own use and for the
use
of others.  You may also wish to make videotape copies of these films
for
exhibition or reuse.  We hope that easy access to these films will
assist
mediamakers, scholars, teachers, students, exhibitors and members of the
general public in coming to terms with the complex and diverse
audiovisual
history of the 20th century.  Further, we hope that easy access to a
diverse collection of copyright- and restriction-free content will
encourage more people to be moving image authors in their own right.

The digitized video files are in MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 formats.  Information
on
downloading and players is available on the site.

Please visit the Archive at http://www.moviearchive.org.

An article on the background and rationale for this project may be found
at
http://eserver.org/bs/52/prelinger.html.

The Internet Moving Images Archive is a project of the Internet Archive
(http://www.archive.org) in collaboration with Prelinger Archives
(http://www.prelinger.com).

Rick Prelinger
Prelinger Archives   http://www.prelinger.com
P.O. Box 590622, San Francisco, Calif. 94159-0622
+1 415 750-0445      Fax: +1 415 750-0607
footage at panix.com"


Kurt-Werner Pörtner