Running an entertainment filled USB kit

IDK if the title actually makes sense, but for about a month now, I’ve been running my own little ‘company’ at my school; I’ve been making little USB packages with entertainment in them, like movies and music and shows for free. I have been getting the entertainment off of internet archive. I give the authors credit and yada yada yada. I need some recommendations because I have been running out of stuff to put on there. any suggestions?

In addition to credit, you owe the content creators money.

I like the idea of introducing people to awesome media that people ought to know but may (for various reasons) not be currently trendy.

@Fear_Itself is correct that downloading stuff off of anywhere at all is analogous to Xeroxing library books, so since this is, by your own description, not for your personal or other “fair” use you had better check that anything you re-distribute is in the public domain or otherwise licensed for re-distribution. You wouldn’t want your employer, customers, or yourself to receive any legal nastygrams.

I got all the legal stuff sorted, and i’m ot charging anything per USB

all content was posted BY the creators, and I make sure every download is legit.

Unless the content creator specifically posted a public domain license, you are still violating copyright.

If the OP is getting them from the Internet Archive, there’s a good chance they’re Creative Commons licensed, perhaps with attribution required, which they’re also providing? If so, it might be perfectly fine.

OP, there’s also Project Gutenberg for books, abandonware games (a legal gray area, ie unenforced copyrights), public domain works from the US government, and things that have fallen out of copyright abroad.

I have downloaded an enormous volume of free content. Some is old, some is creative commons. Some is just, “you can take this”. (I’m pretty sure that’s what Tom Lehrer did with his opus a few years ago.) Some of it is associated with a tip jar, and if you are passing it along, you should pass along the link to that, too.

But artists don’t just want to be paid, they also want to be read (or the equivalent for other media.) So there’s a lot of legal-to-download content out there.

Of course, there’s also a lot of copyrighted stuff that you can’t legally copy or distribute.

This board respects copyrights. So if posters do give suggestions to the OP, please only give ones that are legal to distribute.

thanks :slight_smile:

Public-domain ebooks. Homer. Shakespeare. Charles Dickens. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

I think you need to do a little curation. This should be to introduce people to some gems they have never heard of, not the collected words of Shakespeare. I need to think about it. Also consider some video games and maybe things more exotically interactive. E.g. here is an old puzzle computer game that is (now) freeware: https://www.eblong.com/zarf/ftp/Systems-Twilight-Win.zip

[As pointed out above, stuff downloaded off the Internet Archive may be in the public domain, may not be but be redistributable, or may be copyrighted work where one would be advised to double-check the license. Like if it says “No part of this publication may be reproduced… without prior written permission of the publisher,” that is a boilerplate copyright notice.]