3 ms·

I wonder what this material is. Are these commercial films, historical footage, or what?

by veridies 8y ago

eli 8y ago
The OP says they're public domain, so I'd guess it's films produced by the government.
- vsl 8y ago
  ...or past the copyright window.
Semaphor 8y ago
> Years ago in partnership with the National Archives Amazon.com digitized a tremendous amount of film for the National Archives, with the catch that the material cannot be freely disseminated online by the National Archives until Amazon breaks even on their digitization investment. It’s been years now and for a variety of reasons - many of which are Amazon’s fault - there still exist a solid number of discs that Amazon hasn’t sold even one of. (In part because amazon hasn’t even had them all available to sell. Pretty ridiculous). > The flipside of the catch is that the DVDs can be viewed and even copied for $0 on site by researchers. I am doing research there and I have have a research pass. I was looking at many of these titles yesterday. It’s time to set these national treasures free. -- https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/a6fkpm/i_have_temporary_3_days_access_to_more_than_2000/ebuf75j/?context=1 https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/a6fkpm/i_have_...
- traek 8y ago
  That doesn’t answer what type of media is on the disks.
  - lurker_primo 8y ago
    It says film. So, it could be movies or images. What else would be possible? Are you thinking of quickest ways to rip the DVDs if they are movies?
    - SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
      Yes, but "film" could refer to a lot of different content. Movies, TV shows, documentaries, commercials, interviews, news reports etc. GP was just wondering out loud about the content itself, not the format of said content.
      - userbinator 8y ago
        A little off-topic, but it's interesting to see the shift in meaning of the "reel of film" icon over the decades; a long time ago, it would signify any video, but now it's more associated with an actual cinema film.
- 1024core 8y ago
  So... it's already been 3 days, right?
esonderegger 8y ago
My guess is they're the films described in the CustomFlix partnership announced here: https://www.archives.gov/press/press-releases/2007/nr07-122.html https://www.archives.gov/press/press-releases/2007/nr07-122.... For all the helpful advice offered both here and on Reddit about how to do this, I wish there had been more time asking if this was something the OP should be doing in the first place. I completely understand the frustration if this is indeed the above set of films and it's been over eleven years since the digitization agreement and files have not yet been made freely available to the public. That said, planning to use a researcher's pass to "set these treasures free" and blaming Amazon for not having generated more revenue from these films makes it sound like the OP thinks he knows better than the staff of the National Archives how to best care for these assets and that he knows better than the folks at Amazon how to turn a profit. To me, it sounds more than a little arrogant. A big reason the National Archives enters into agreements like this with companies is that digitization, especially on their scale, is expensive. If it weren't for agreements like this, Amazon would only want to digitize the films for which they knew they could turn a profit and the vast majority of the collection would sit un-digitized and be at risk of loss. The tradeoff is between the immediacy of access vs the number of assets digitized and the team at NARA made the decision that it was better for the American people to have more assets digitized. I'm worried that the next time NARA is in talks with someone about a digitization agreement (for example, if there's a large number of early jazz audio recordings on 1/4" reels and Spotify is interesting in paying the cost of digitization in exchange for 2-3 years of exclusivity) that the company will point to this example and say "didn't you just let a researcher publish the entire collection Amazon digitized? How can you assure us the same thing won't happen with these recordings?" The result will be the National Archives clamping down on researcher access. I think that would be a net loss for everyone.
- coryfklein 8y ago
  > The result will be the National Archives clamping down on researcher access. Or maybe the National Archives will stop making deals where free distribution of the material is unlikely to happen for decades and will instead open up greater access to researchers. Or they could make the same deals but put a deadline on them to prevent the exclusivity from sitting in limbo forever. That would at least give Amazon an incentive to distribute the material rather than just squatting on its monopoly.

I wonder what this material is. Are these commercial films, historical footage, or what?

eli 8y ago

The OP says they're public domain, so I'd guess it's films produced by the government.

vsl 8y ago
...or past the copyright window.

Semaphor 8y ago

> Years ago in partnership with the National Archives Amazon.com digitized a tremendous amount of film for the National Archives, with the catch that the material cannot be freely disseminated online by the National Archives until Amazon breaks even on their digitization investment. It’s been years now and for a variety of reasons - many of which are Amazon’s fault - there still exist a solid number of discs that Amazon hasn’t sold even one of. (In part because amazon hasn’t even had them all available to sell. Pretty ridiculous). > The flipside of the catch is that the DVDs can be viewed and even copied for $0 on site by researchers. I am doing research there and I have have a research pass. I was looking at many of these titles yesterday. It’s time to set these national treasures free. -- https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/a6fkpm/i_have_temporary_3_days_access_to_more_than_2000/ebuf75j/?context=1 https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/a6fkpm/i_have_...

traek 8y ago
That doesn’t answer what type of media is on the disks.
- lurker_primo 8y ago
  It says film. So, it could be movies or images. What else would be possible? Are you thinking of quickest ways to rip the DVDs if they are movies?
  - SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
    Yes, but "film" could refer to a lot of different content. Movies, TV shows, documentaries, commercials, interviews, news reports etc. GP was just wondering out loud about the content itself, not the format of said content.
    - userbinator 8y ago
      A little off-topic, but it's interesting to see the shift in meaning of the "reel of film" icon over the decades; a long time ago, it would signify any video, but now it's more associated with an actual cinema film.
1024core 8y ago
So... it's already been 3 days, right?

esonderegger 8y ago

My guess is they're the films described in the CustomFlix partnership announced here: https://www.archives.gov/press/press-releases/2007/nr07-122.html https://www.archives.gov/press/press-releases/2007/nr07-122.... For all the helpful advice offered both here and on Reddit about how to do this, I wish there had been more time asking if this was something the OP should be doing in the first place. I completely understand the frustration if this is indeed the above set of films and it's been over eleven years since the digitization agreement and files have not yet been made freely available to the public. That said, planning to use a researcher's pass to "set these treasures free" and blaming Amazon for not having generated more revenue from these films makes it sound like the OP thinks he knows better than the staff of the National Archives how to best care for these assets and that he knows better than the folks at Amazon how to turn a profit. To me, it sounds more than a little arrogant. A big reason the National Archives enters into agreements like this with companies is that digitization, especially on their scale, is expensive. If it weren't for agreements like this, Amazon would only want to digitize the films for which they knew they could turn a profit and the vast majority of the collection would sit un-digitized and be at risk of loss. The tradeoff is between the immediacy of access vs the number of assets digitized and the team at NARA made the decision that it was better for the American people to have more assets digitized. I'm worried that the next time NARA is in talks with someone about a digitization agreement (for example, if there's a large number of early jazz audio recordings on 1/4" reels and Spotify is interesting in paying the cost of digitization in exchange for 2-3 years of exclusivity) that the company will point to this example and say "didn't you just let a researcher publish the entire collection Amazon digitized? How can you assure us the same thing won't happen with these recordings?" The result will be the National Archives clamping down on researcher access. I think that would be a net loss for everyone.

coryfklein 8y ago
> The result will be the National Archives clamping down on researcher access. Or maybe the National Archives will stop making deals where free distribution of the material is unlikely to happen for decades and will instead open up greater access to researchers. Or they could make the same deals but put a deadline on them to prevent the exclusivity from sitting in limbo forever. That would at least give Amazon an incentive to distribute the material rather than just squatting on its monopoly.