Ransom America's public domain video treasures back from the National Archives!

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez,

If you've already made your Christmas gifts to EFF and Creative Commons and have a couple of bucks left over? How about buying a gift for the public domain!!

Public.Resource.Org just ordered another 41 titles and spent $560 on some really great FedFlix from the vaults of the National Archive, there is still plenty of great material out there, so we put together an Amazon Wish List. If you see anything you'd like to buy the public domain we'll take your DVD and upload the video to YouTube, the Internet Archive, and to our own rsync/ftp public domain stock footage library.
Background: these videos were made at US taxpayer expense, and they are in the public domain. However, they aren't distributed for free by the National Archives; instead they're sold through Amazon as a money-maker for the government, which charges you to get access to the stuff you already own and paid for. The Archives get a minuscule amount of money by doing this: $3,273.66 over the past two years! In order to make a measly three grand, the National Archives have closed off the entire USA's access to its video treasures.

Public Domain Videos from the Vaults of the National Archives (Thanks, Carl)

• [Jeff]

  Sigh. “Closed off the entire USA’s access to its video treasures” simply isn’t true.” This sort of overheated rhetoric doesn’t help matters. They’re selling DVDs. Whether they should have a budget to make these DVDs available for just the costs of shipping, or completely free, is another matter, but there’s no need to exaggerate things so completely. I’d also estimate that a good majority of Americans don’t have the access to, the ability to, or the desire to, seek out and download video, and then make it easily viewable in their home. I’d much rather they weren’t working through a for-profit vendor, but this isn’t an unreasonable model, and I’d argue, makes the material accessible to *more* Americans than would an Internet Archive-type model.

  • [Cory Doctorow]

    You know what’s “overheated rhetoric?” Neurasthenic carping about how offended you are by rhetoric.

    “The majority of Americans don’t have the desire or ability to download video?” Now *that*’s ridiculous rhetoric. I’ve got an entire YouTube that says you’re wrong, wrong, wrong.

    Wrong.

  • [Cory Doctorow]

    “this isn’t an unreasonable model, and I’d argue, makes the material accessible to *more* Americans than would an Internet Archive-type model.”

    Oh, you could *argue* this, if you didn’t care about the facts.

    The facts being:

    * The Amazon DVD-for-sale program reached almost no-one

    * Putting the videos online reached orders of magnitude more people than selling the videos through Amazon did

    So, yeah, you could *argue* that up is down, black is white, and big is small. But if you cared about the demonstrated facts, you wouldn’t.

• [Kimmo]

  In order to make a measly three grand, the National Archives have closed off the entire USA’s access to its video treasures.

  Paywall.

  That’s fucking poo.

• [jerwin]

  $18.95 for 60 minutes of mpeg2 video is a real bargain…

  Check out the Rate cards for
  Nara Audio: http://www.silverspringstudios.com/nara_audio.htm
  Nara Video: http://www.silverspringstudios.com/nara_video.htm

  If you want the National archives to host a youtube channel, you’re going to have to pay for it in the form of appropriations.

• [CarlMalamud]

  FWIW, taxpayers paid not only to make the videos in the first place, NARA was also charged an “ingestion fee” for each tape by Amazon to digitize the video. The fee is deducted from NARA’s royalties. If you look at the contract, you also see that if Amazon doesn’t make a profit on a particular video, NARA apparently never gets the right to use it. And, during the 5-year freezeout period, NARA agrees not to use the video at all.

  While in theory NARA could go digitize a particular title itself and post it, that doesn’t happen since they don’t want to compete with their partner. (More from ArchivesNext here and here.)

  I have no problem whatsoever with Amazon selling DVDs. Been a loyal customer since they opened their doors. But, this video also should be more broadly distributed. Enjoy the public domain in any format you’d like, with or without a credit card.

• [Cory Doctorow]

  @12: Oh, Carl! Stop confusing the issue with relevant facts!

• [dwhitaker]

  Does the wishlist include the entirety of what the National Archives are selling that hasn’t yet been uploaded? Also (I’ve never really used Amazon wishlists before), if people buy off the list there isn’t a risk of duplicate gift-giving, right?

• [jjasper]

  (a, not the only) Solution – the US Government pays Carl an honest wage to put the videos online, with the requirement that he embed a short ad in anything with a duration of more than 5 minutes that they can later rotate out as needed.

  Carl does what he loves, the National Archives have an ongoing revenue stream, and American can watch the videos free, just not ad free. Ad buying can be done by groups like the US Armed Forces, the National Mint collectors groups, the SBA, etc. US government groups that already spend on ad buys online anyhow.

  Oh, and set up a link to the video to make it available to buy as an ad free download for iTunes prices – $1.99 or some such.

  PROBLEM SOLVED. Everyone wins.

• [Anonymous]

  I just ordered three.

• [Anonymous]

  “PRESIDENT KENNEDY’S STATE OF THE UNION MESSAGE”

  Sent.

• [CarlMalamud]

  #11. The lists have an “add to cart” if the item has not been purchased yet. If it has reached the max requested (which I set to 1), there is no add to cart button. So, no worries about duplicates, plus it has my shipto address already there.

  I haven’t put everything into the wishlist, only ones that I choose. If we sell out on the first 128, I’ll look for some more. Some titles not out yet, some (like Universal Newsreels) already available in other locations, some just didn’t look that interesting.

  #12. I have a standing offer out to agencies such as NARA that I’ll set them up with equipment, train their people how to do this themselves. With NTIS, we always give them back a disk drive along with their original tapes, so if they want to start posting their own stuff they can.

• [jerwin]

  Apparently, CustomFlix’s ingestion fee– the very fees which must be recouped in order to purchase the “Digitized Source File” are $35 for videotape and $150 for film. Almost reasonable–at least in the rarified world of research fees.

  I suppose that you could go digitize the source material yourself, but the archives notes that that the materials available in the reading rooms are mostly second generation copies, and not broadcast quality– i.e. unacceptable.

• [Kimmo]

  If you actually knew anything about the attitudes of employees and policymakers *at* the Archives, then you’d know that they’re doing what they can within a given framework to make records (textual, video, still, digital, etc.) available.

  I didn’t infer any ill-will towards the Archive peeps, myself

• [Jeff]

  “Neurasthenic”? Cory, I want to marry you.

• [CarlMalamud]

  Together, we were able to sell out the public domain. All 153 videos have been purchased. Thanks to everybody for your support. We’ll start ripping these as they arrive and post them on the net.

• [Anonymous]

  It seems to me that if the government only makes about $3000 per year for this service, then it is priced appropriately. While serving the segment of the public that is interested in this material, they have costs to cover that the rest of the population should not be forced to bear. It can be very difficult to price something to cover costs and not make a profit. A modest profit or loss in this situation actually means the government is doing a pretty good job.

• [h_pants]

  I’d still like to thank Carl for doing his part to increase the availability of these videos.

  Cory: If you are seriously that concerned about how slowly the Archives is providing access, then do something about it by maybe lobbying Congress to give the Archives (significantly) more money to provide public access *without* private enterprise. It ain’t happening soon, given that hurdle.

  If you actually knew anything about the attitudes of employees and policymakers *at* the Archives, then you’d know that they’re doing what they can within a given framework to make records (textual, video, still, digital, etc.) available.

  ‘Nuff said. No hate here.

• [Anonymous]

  Is their deal with Amazon an exclusive one? Certainly when I worked for the Photoduplication division of the Library of Congress, we were expressly prohibited from any sort of exclusive contract. When we microfilmed public domain material, even at the request of a specific person, copies were sold to anybody else who requested it.

  Hosting isn’t cheap enough that the Archives aren’t going to post everything online anytime soon. But you could probably get access to the material on the same terms as Amazon and cut out the middleman.

• [Anonymous]

  rsync and ftp only? Why not bittorrent these as well.

• [h_pants]

  Maybe the Archives foresaw making more than that when they instituted the program.

  And maybe they’re already thinking of a way to increase public access to the videos outside the DVD program.

  Think before you criticize. Things take time.

  MAYBE THEY ONLY MADE $3,000 BECAUSE THERE’S NOT MUCH PUBLIC INTEREST IN THEM!

  Don’t take out your unspecific and vague disdain for the government on the Archives. They’re goal is to INCREASE public access, but can only do so within the vested interests of the agencies where the records originate and within approved policies.

  • [mdh]

    but can only do so within the vested interests of the agencies

    the influences that impact the behavior (the vested interest) of the National Archives are not a matter of “maybes”.

    The Archives are currently failing their very clear mandate by charging for this material.

    Providing access is one half of what they do. Archiving is the other half

    things take time

    and bad excuses take no time at all.

  • [Cory Doctorow]

    That’s a nice theory. Except that when Carl put the videos online gratis, he found hundreds of thousands of Americans, in the space of days, were interested enough to watch them. So the theory is wrong. The correct facts are:

    * Archives stuck a paywall in front of the videos that you already own, that you paid to produce

    * You didn’t watch them — the paywall was a terminal speedbump on the path to appreciating America’s video treasury

    * Carl liberated those videos, and Americans came to enjoy their treasures in droves.