
AP makes one million minutes of historical footage available on YouTube - mxfh
http://www.ap.org/content/press-release/2015/ap-makes-one-million-minutes-of-history-available-on-youtube
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kayoone
This is awesome and i only now begin to really grasp the importance of things
like this. I recently showed some german post and pre WWII footage to my
grandma on youtube and she was delighted about the ability to access that kind
of rare footage on demand. I recorded her commentary while watching the videos
which was super interesting. She remembered many small details of living in
Berlin post-war that she probably wouldn't have otherwise. She is 87 now, so i
plan to do this a couple more times and make a video that shows the footage
with her commentary on it, just to be able to preserve some of her thoughts
and feelings.

~~~
morsch
That's a great idea. Sounds like it would be a fun converstation starter with
my parents as well. It's easy to imagine a page with curated reaction videos
from regular people with different backgrounds.

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arocks
It seems most of the content is under "Standard YouTube Licence"[1]. Since
this is historical footage I would have preferred if it was under Creative
Commons, so that it could be included in other videos. Anyways, this makes
YouTube even more useful for preserving and making notable videos more
accessible.

[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/static?template=terms](https://www.youtube.com/static?template=terms)

~~~
timothya
You can license the clips by going to the AP Archive website; e.g., this video
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjZ6NNLCdio](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjZ6NNLCdio)
can be licensed from here:
[http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/c0016a30f75d456abf...](http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/c0016a30f75d456abfa018337ca69cb1)
(the link was in the description on YouTube).

I assume they stuck with the Standard YouTube License because that lets them
keep ownership of the videos and license them out separately under their own
terms.

~~~
JupiterMoon
> keep ownership of the videos and license them out separately under their own
> terms.

The one you link to they surely can't own? 1906 => public domain.

~~~
anc84
Copyright works in mysterious ways. They probably have copyright on the actual
files as well as the product that they created when capturing the analog
originals digitally.

~~~
icebraining
Copyright requires creativity; just using a tool to convert from analog to
digital and generate files doesn't grant copyright protection, AFAIK.

~~~
zo1
Intuitively, yes. But unfortunately that doesn't guarantee it to be the case
from a legal perspective.

~~~
Schwolop
IIRC, US copyright law includes the ambiguous words "slavish copy" with
reference to something that would not be copyrightable. For example, the
Vatican sold copyright to the imagery that is the restoration of the Sistine
chapel roof - self evidently a "slavish copy" by design! - to the company that
paid for the restoration, so they could have exclusive rights to sell/license
reproductions of this restored imagery. They've never taken anyone to court,
(quite possibly because their case is wobbly), but they do assert their rights
to this work and try to get people to buy licenses accordingly.

~~~
JupiterMoon
Interesting. In some countries restricting access to the public domain is
itself a crime. I wonder if there will ever be a test case here!

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awalton
Any chance we can get them to make it available via archive.org as well? Yeah
everyone loves Google, but archive.org seems like a vastly better home for
content like this - preserving the historical record digitally, more easily
allowing it to be downloaded and fairly used in video reports, classroom
material, and so forth.

~~~
timothya
Does archive.org have the storage space or bandwidth to serve this much video?

I agree that archive.org is the "correct" place for this content, but I think
YouTube is a more practical location for now (and also the place where I think
the content is more likely to be discovered by regular people: many people
think of searching YouTube when looking for video content of all types, and
YouTube has a top-tier indexing and search engine to help them find the right
stuff).

~~~
anc84
Sure, they already hosted the Prelinger movie archives:
[https://archive.org/details/prelinger](https://archive.org/details/prelinger)
&
[https://archive.org/details/prelingerhomemovies](https://archive.org/details/prelingerhomemovies)

~~~
mapleoin
I can't believe this got 27 million views though:
[https://archive.org/details/AboutBan1935](https://archive.org/details/AboutBan1935)

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phn
It would be very interesting for youtube to include a date of
capture/production field. It would make navigating this a lot easier.

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jonknee
Wow, one of the videos already has 104k views (in 2 days). It's a video of a
polar bear who got hold of a tourist at a zoo. Strange what goes viral.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JUr6LRqWYk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JUr6LRqWYk)

~~~
sosuke
People doing unsafe things with their cameras is popular. It wasn't some shaky
cam either, and the bear holding her shoe in a later shot and licking the bars
is powerful. More so this was in 1994, camera mishaps aren't new.

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devhxinc
This is awesome, now can use the footage as YouTube's Terms of Service allows
remixes and news reporting.

[https://www.youtube.com/yt/copyright/fair-
use.html](https://www.youtube.com/yt/copyright/fair-use.html)

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x5n1
Now if they only allow you to use this freely we would actually have
something. Though something is better than nothing.

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ypcx
A great archive of 20th century propaganda.

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ashbrahma
Link to the Youtube Page:
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHTK-2W11Vh1V4uwofOfR4w](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHTK-2W11Vh1V4uwofOfR4w)

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bennettfeely
Wow.

1,000,000 minutes = 16,670 hours = 700 days = 1.9 years of footage

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JupiterMoon
When does such material become public domain?

~~~
icebraining
That depends on the age and location of the footage, and where the viewer is
(it can be public domain in some countries, and not in others).

~~~
JupiterMoon
If it is in the public domain does this override the Standard Youtube Licence?
I.e. can on legally download the video? Or does one still have to use the AP's
webpage which seems to require sign up (and then I don't know what).

~~~
lmm
If the content that's on Youtube is in the public domain then yes. Note that
sometimes restoration involves enough creative work to make the result
copyrightable even if the original footage was in the public domain.

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TazeTSchnitzel
Unfortunately, the videos on YouTube don't include the date metadata.

