A Repository for Multimedia in the Public Domain?

8tim8 asks: "I was looking through my uni's record library yesterday (where they have lots of old jazz records) and it made me wonder, Is there anything like Project Gutenberg for audio or video files? I'm not talking about just a place to download old audio or video files, I'm talking about somewhere that has lots of old broadcasts/movies, and has actually checked to verify that what they have is in the public domain. It seems like there must be lots of stuff in the public domain...is there a place that let's people access it?"

wikimedia.org

[Nos.]

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page [wikimedia.org]

Archive.org

[FlipmodePlaya]

Archive.org Moving Images Repository: http://www.archive.org/details/movies [archive.org] Archive.org Live Music Repository: http://www.archive.org/audio/etree.php [archive.org] I believe they collaborate with other projects to assemble these repositories, for instance their text database has Project Gutenberg's works (among others).

Check out Archive.org

[CounterZer0]

Archive.org's goal is to get tons of that stuff, and already have hundreds of gigs available for free download!

Kazaa?

[Just Some Guy]

My daughter says you can get all sorts of new music and movies for free off the Internet. At least, that's what I'm getting ready to tell the RIAA in court next week.

May not exist.

[jZnat]

If you're looking for any public domain audio or video that was created on a computer, you may not find any due to the 70+ year copyright bullshit in the US.

Wikimedia Commons?

[molo]

The Wikimedia Commons ( http://commons.wikimedia.org/ [wikimedia.org] ) has a good deal of content under free licenses (GFDL, PD, CC, etc.). Finding specific typed of stuff is pretty easy. See http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Video [wikimedia.org] and http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Public_ domain [wikimedia.org] . Hope this helps. Good luck.

-molo

Indeed!

[McCarrum]

Torrent, the Backups of Champions.

Beer, the Breakfast of Champions.

well, there are the community-run sites ..

[torpor]

.. maybe not all the google you want it to be, but we've been running our own, public archives on ampfea.org [ampfea.org] for a few years now. it is community-suported, 100%, and open as you want it to be.

undoubtedly there are tons more sites like ours. we recently converted our resources [community-owned hardware on donated bandwidth] to serve torrents, and have more tricky stuff up our sleeves for artists wanting a place to put their works (ipod integration, etc.)

we don't do much quality control, we do ask artists

problem with pre-1972 sound recordings

[rjnagle]

Movies are a different matter, but from the standpoint of federal law, the public domain does not exist for pre-1972 recordings because they are not covered by federal copyright law. That's why you don't see much movement in multimedia sound recordings to establish a public domain.

Shocking, eh?

Here's a project to try to work around this restriction
http://www.projectgramophone.org/TeleRead-Article- 01Nov2003.html [projectgramophone.org]

Recently, there's been social pressures on uncommercial works to be released into something called the public domain.

Re:problem with pre-1972 sound recordings

[rjnagle]

Sorry, this pre-1972 preemption by state law applies to AUDIO recordings, not VIDEO recordings.

See also
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Public_domai n_films [wikipedia.org]

Multimedia.

[dasunt]

• http://www.mutopiaproject.org/ [mutopiaproject.org]
• http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Sound [wikimedia.org] (Check bottom)
• Internet Archive: Open Source Audio [archive.org]
• Free Classical Music Archive recordings performed by the MIT choir and other amateurs (quite high quality) [mit.edu]
• The Choral Public Domain Library describes itself as 'A Free Sheet Music Archive' [cpdl.org]
• Mutopia: a collection of public domain sheet music [ibiblio.org]
• Project Gutenberg music section [ibiblio.org]
• MusicBrainz: a database of structured metadata about audio releases [musicbrainz.org]

Like Project Gutenberg? Oh... How about

[InternetVoting]

Project Gutenberg

Did anybody notice that Project Gutenberg does do audio [gutenberg.org] and video [gutenberg.org] files?

The wikipedia suggestions are good, also check out Creative Commons [creativecommons.org]; not quite the same, but useful.

Classical music performances over 70 years old

[thechuckbenz]

karadar.com [karadar.com] (with Cocoa.itc.it) has old performances of a ton of classical works, which are claimed to no longer be covered by copyright.

Re:Classical music performances over 70 years old

[tepples]

karadar.com (with Cocoa.itc.it) has old performances of a ton of classical works, which are claimed to no longer be covered by copyright.

In the United States, where Slashdot's server is located, pre-1972 sound recordings are encumbered by state law exclusive rights until 2067. On what basis is karadar.com's claim valid in the United States? Or is it not intended to be valid in the United States?

Re:Classical music performances over 70 years old

[thechuckbenz]

In the [US...] pre-1972 sound recordings are encumbered by state law exclusive rights until 2067. On what basis is karadar.com's claim valid in the United States?

Karadar/Cocoa appear to be Italy based, so they probably only researched the US at the federal level, if at all. IANAL, and I'm not associated with Karadar.

Library of Congress

[waynegoode]

The Library of Congress has collected a lot of old audio & video/film. Much of it is online. You may have to hunt around a bit to find the specific items, but a few good links are:

• Moving Image Collections [loc.gov]
• Film Archive [loc.gov]
• Recorded Sound Reference Center [loc.gov]
• American Folklife Center Online Collections [loc.gov]