government-preserved newsreels
It’s great that these old National Archives videos are available on Google Video. I often enjoy watching old educational and ephemeral films. But I do wonder what are the copyright terms of these videos. Are they in the public domain? If they are, can I download one and use it in a found-footage project, or would I be violating Google’s terms of service. While the individual video pages have a button allowing me to download the video to my hard drive, there is little indication about the copyright status of the video. I’d rather see these videos on a non-profit project like Archive.org, which is completely upfront about the copyright status of a given video. I hope that the National Archives didn’t work out an exclusive deal to distribute old videos with Google.
Update: This Ars Technica story offers more context about the project, but doesn’t go into the intellectual property issues.
