National Archives rolls out films through Amazon’s on-demand DVD service
In a move to make historic films more easily available to the public, the National Archives has agreed to distribute thousands of films dating from 1920 to 1967 through Amazon.com Inc.’s on-demand DVD service, CustomFlix Labs, which this week started selling the films for $19.99 per DVD ordered on Amazon.com.
Amazon is so far offering about 20 National Archives films—including newsreels of the first televised presidential debate, between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy, and of other historic events—and plans to introduce about 200 more each month, a CustomFlix spokeswoman says. The agreement with the National Archives doesn’t specify how many films will eventually be made available through Amazon’s on-demand DVD service, though the plan is to offer “thousands” of the more than 200,000 motion picture titles held by the National Archives, including documentaries, newsreels, war combat footage and research-and-development technology films.
Under terms of the agreement, CustomFlix will make two extra copies of each DVD it produces for retail sale, leaving the National Archives with one extra copy for preservation and another that can be made available to the public for copying. Once Amazon covers its costs in the program, it will provide the National Archives with a royalty fee on each DVD it sells, a spokeswoman for the National Archives says.
“While the public can come to our College Park, MD, research room to view films and even copy them at no charge, this new program will make our holdings much more accessible to millions of people who cannot travel to the Washington, D.C., area,” says Allen Weinstein, archivist of the United States. He described the additional copies of DVDs provided by CustomFlix as “an important contribution to our preservation program.”
The National Archives also makes many of its films available through a video-search agreement with Google, with the oldest available film, “Carmencita—Spanish Dance,” dating back to 1894. The National Archives videos available on Google.com are viewed instantly through streaming video at no charge.
National Archives material, which is not copyrighted, is available to anyone who wants to copy it—including films, books and other content—for personal use or to sell it, the spokeswoman says.
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