Archivist Rick Prelinger sez, "The U.S. Department of Defense has
entered into a contract with T3 Media
to get its gigantic still and moving image collection digitized at no
cost to the government. In exchange, T3 Media will become the exclusive
public outlet for millions of images and videos for ten years.
Unlike most other developed nations, the U.S. Government does not claim
copyright on video, film, photographs and other media produced by its
workers. The immense number of works in the U.S. public domain have
enabled countless researchers, makers and citizens to read, view and
make many new works. True, those wishing to use modern military
materials (1940s-present) in DoD's archives often need to negotiate
their release with military public affairs, but these materials have
traditionally been available for just the cost of duplication. This is
soon to change."
In exchange for covering a share of digitizing and hosting costs (the
government will pick up an unspecified share of costs as well), T3 Media
will provide access to the government and receive a 10-year exclusive
license to charge for public access to these public domain materials.
I contacted T3Media's communications manager who could only tell me that
"the material will be available for licensing." Costs, procedures and
restrictions are still undecided or undisclosed. T3 will possess the
highest-quality digital copies of these materials and there is no
guarantee that DoD will offer them to the public online when the 10-year
window expires. It's therefore hard to know whether this contract will
serve the public interest.
While I have not yet seen the contract, the project Statement of Objectives offers additional information and here's T3Media's release.
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