18 comments

  • paweladamczuk 3 hours ago

    This is really lovely. I think it's pretty obvious that it bases on sources like Internet Archive and the Library of Congress, but it does add value.

    I just wonder if it can survive - is there a business model here? If not, it's just a tech demo and then it doesn't have value as the hosted version, it would have it if the whole processing/indexing pipeline was open sourced so that anyone can host it themselves and pay for their own infrastructure.

    • moritzwarhier 2 hours ago

      > is there a business model

      the "business value" (aka legal extortion) is obviously to extract rent from information that was previously free (as in free speech), and that is not licensed.

      I don't understand your comprehension problems.

      However, I wouldn't categorically deny positive external effects. These are exotic, because or politics and economy are based on negative external effects, violence and corrruption.

      However, there are positive "externalities" (a different word for the woo of pseudo-scientifical "economic theories, that is easy to overlook).

      But in the end, the plausible results are simple. "Value" comes from

      - natural resources - extortion, if there is no sufficient legal boundary - marginal improvements in improving extortion and extraction efficiency

      See, I saved you an MBA there.

      • wildzzz 41 minutes ago

        Someone has to pay the hosting costs. I don't see an issue with asking for a nominal fee for access to a curated library (there is a lot of useless garbage in the public domain). Of course, anyone can do as they please with public domain media once they've accessed it, even building their own hosting site so it's not exactly a real money making idea.

      • Forgeties79 an hour ago

        >I don't understand your comprehension problems.

        You can make your point but you can’t and shouldn’t talk to people like this here. Especially when it’s clearly so unwarranted.

  • akiselev 2 hours ago
  • tomalbrc 3 hours ago
  • USeyller 4 hours ago

    Sounds rally cool. How and where are the movie clips collected, and how is it verified that they are in public domain?

    • mocheeze 4 hours ago

      Many of these are sourced from the US Government, which means public domain. They also have links to the sources below so you can verify source and copyright.

  • shevy-java an hour ago

    Page loads way too slowly IMO. Even the youtube page loads somewhat slowly, but it is about 10x faster than that webpage. There is no need for these fancypants animations really. I am not going to wait for slow animations to finish.

  • Animats 4 hours ago

    This looks like a collection of clips from the Internet Archive. "General Aviation - Fact or Fiction" is on the Moving Image Archive at [1], and the full version is in the Internet Archive at [2]. Most of the content is from the Internet Archive. What's the point?

    At least they don't slap their logo on public domain material, like Periscope Films does.

    [1] https://www.movingimagearchive.com/sources/general-aviation-...

    [2] https://archive.org/details/gov.ntis.ava12749vnb

    • bryanrasmussen 3 hours ago

      Depending on how they serve these clips (do they save them locally etc.) the point could be to take load off the internet archive.

      The other point might be to provide better search capabilities than IA, also taking load off. Sometimes verifying something actually is Public Domain on IA can be work in itself, putting more work on a primary resource. In short it seems to me these people are doing a good thing.

    • mocheeze 3 hours ago

      BTW they don't hide the source of the videos. Scrolling down on the video page links to the collection and source.

  • pmdulaney 2 days ago

    I don't see how to access the search function. All I see are example videos.

    • jolmg 4 hours ago

      Right above the thumbnails is a search input. On the top right is also a link that says "Search" that takes you to it.