Progress report on liberating America's video archives

You'll remember that I've been urging people to go watch the public domain videos that rogue archivist Carl Malamud has been liberating from the US government and putting on YouTube, so that he could demonstrate the pent-up desire to watch these things and get the Feds to stop sitting on them. Now Carl has given his testimony and he reports:

Thanks to everybody for viewing the public domain videos I posted from the National Archives. NARA officials informed me that total revenue from the Amazon deal back to NARA over the last two years has been $3,273.66. I read their contract (link to pdf) and my back-of-the-envelope calculations say total DVD says can't be more than 11,000 units and are more likely well under 5,000 units.
In less than a week, we did 14,664 views on just 46 videos, and I'm pretty sure if we put all 1,899 videos on-line for a while, the number of views would go up by a couple of decimal places!
For those interested in the background on this as well as other NARA issues (like the $531 million computer system they're buying that the vendor has 15 patents on!!), I've posted my testimony on the subject.
Congress's official page for the hearing is here. My testimony in pdf and on scribd.
Perhaps relevant to the National Archives was Monday's announcement by the President of France that of his $50 billion stimulus package, he is devoting $1.1 billion to scanning the French National Library. My oral remarks to the Committee will suggest that we face a unique opportunity, in the midst of a great depression, to use Recovery.Gov to create enduring public works for the digital age.

National Archives and Record Administration (Thanks, Carl!)

Previously:

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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JoshP

read his testimony…
too many *ss chapping acronyms. what’s up with ‘no cost to the government’ private sector deals. ‘Privatization’ of public properties?? where’s my pitchfork :)
I did sideline research into the library of Alexandria. It was a sacred duty (according to source) to accumulate a half million scrolls or whatever. They were proud of it. It was a big deal. Now it’s just gone. Wow… okay, gonna go eat Haagen-Dazs.
phisrow

What is a cool guy like Carl doing using scribd?

A “service” that turns nice, clean, standard PDFs into a ghastly flash-laden monstrosity whose only “virtue” over just linking to the document itself is that it makes downloading hard. That doesn’t sound like something Public Resource would have any use for.

Where’s the upside?
Anonymous

Is anyone else as concerned as I, that they didn’t even bother transferring that film to tape, until well after DVDs began being widely distributed? I don’t think things bode well.

(It says in the first few seconds that is was transferred to tape the 15th of September, 2005)
cjovalle

Anon, tape can be a better preservation format than DVD.
h_pants

There’s no such thing as a rogue archivist.

And the Archives is trying to release their videos, not sit on them. Be patient!!!

http://www.youtube.com/user/usnationalarchives
Anonymous

Wow – stellar!