In the community video section of archive.org I found the excellent “Planet Earth” series that I believe was done by the BBC.
Here it is: https://archive.org/details/Planet_Earth
I find it hard to believe that this footage is royalty free and under the creative commons license as the footage in the community video section is supposed to be.
So, did someone just make a mistake or can I really use this footage how I want to?
The BBC hold the copyright. I have yet to find anything that says the BBC has allowed any use outside of the copyright.
Whoever uploaded it didn’t fill in the copyright info, as far as I can tell. It’s very unlikely he has permission from the BBC to upload it to Archive.org, but I can’t say for sure.
YIFY is a pirate group that releases movies on the torrents. That’s what all the videos there were. No way they were uploaded by the BBC.
There might be a fair-use argument for using parts of it, depending what you do, but don’t try that unless you have production insurance and a lawyer to review. Of course that really applies to any footage.
Does the fact that it’s much lower resolution than originally broadcast matter at all? Just curious.
I’m surprised, because archive.org always seemed like a law abiding, professional organization to me.
I don’t think this necessarily reflects on archive.org itself – this is on the “Community Video” section of the archive.org site, which used to be called “Open Source Video” and allows users to upload videos. My guess is that they just haven’t realized it’s there yet, and will remove it if/when they realize it’s there.
Unless, of course, they somehow got permission from the copyright holder. But it seems unlikely, given that those are YIFY releases.
I’m no lawyer, but I’m pretty confident that it doesn’t matter.
No doubt a user uploaded it, and the archive.org people haven’t been notified of it yet to take it down.
Just a heads-up here but, if you download them as a torrent you may get a nasty letter from your ISP telling you not to download ANY torrents.
There are a LOT of legitimate, legal torrents out there.
What percentage of torrents out there are legal?
According to this, in the first half of 2012 in regards to music downloads, it was 31%. I don’t know if there’s a similar study for video downloads.
It’s probably a very small percentage, but that doesn’t matter. Bittorrent is a just a protocol, and perfectly legal.
randompattern, did you actually get a letter from an ISP that forbade all torrents?
To put some perspective on this. 70% of email is spam. So BitTorrent is about as legitimate as email.
Spam is annoying.
Illegal torrent is illegal.
It’s like claiming that a cereal that contains 70% rat poison is equivalent to a cereal containing 70% sugar.
I don’t understand how that works as an analogy at all. They both will kill you, so…what…ban it all?
BitTorrent is a clever, useful, and efficient protocol for the distribution of large files, and is used by record companies, video/multimedia companies, software companies, etc., to distribute content legally. That 31% of the music users are using it legally is not insignificant. My guess is that you thought it was something that is rarely used for legitimate file transfers when, in fact, that is not the case. I think it would be a pity to quash this technology because a majority of its users are currently using it for piracy. I mean, hell, archive.org has over one million torrents available. It’d be a pity not to have speedy access to that archive through this technology.
A lot of spam is illegal.
Most of the spam I find in my spam filters on gmail are violating this act.
For one thing, almost every Linux distro out there is distributed via torrents. And lots of other free software too. Since the majority of free software is distributed using bittorrent, blocking it has an adverse effect that threatens the free speech of FOSS proponents, contributors and users. Not that a monopolistic ISP has to protect speech, but they should anyway.
Besides, it’s just another protocol. Block it, and Pirate Bay will be using HTTP, FTP, the USPS or freaking carrier pigeon the next day. The issue isn’t the protocol, is my point. Blocking the protocol to prevent piracy is like tearing up the entire US Highway system to prevent drug smuggling.