{"id":2994,"date":"2019-07-03T16:35:28","date_gmt":"2019-07-03T16:35:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/?p=2994"},"modified":"2019-07-03T16:35:28","modified_gmt":"2019-07-03T16:35:28","slug":"ephemera-public-domain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/ephemera-public-domain\/","title":{"rendered":"Ephemera and the Public Domain"},"content":{"rendered":"

On January 1st, 2019 the above image, best known as The Great Wave<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0(c. 1829-1832) by Japanese artist\u00a0Katsushika Hokusai entered the United States public domain in a figurative wave of previously copyrighted works<\/a><\/span>\u00a0held hostage by\u00a0the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act<\/strong>. What’s interesting about Hokusai’s work in particular is that it was never meant to last even this long. The Great Wave<\/em> is a type of woodblock print made on cheap, flimsy paper called\u00a0ukiyo-e<\/em>, which translates as “pictures of the floating, fleeting, or transient world.”<\/p>\n

Ephemeral images of an ephemeral world<\/h4>\n

My gateway to the public domain was through <\/span>Mystery Science Theater 3000<\/i><\/b> (back in the Joel and Mike days). The shorts that occasionally played before the schlock feature were stagey social propaganda from the 1940s and 50s, recontextualized as high camp. Later in high school, I learned about <\/span>Rick Prelinger<\/b> after catching a presentation of his mental hygiene film collection in New York City. This was the guy supplying shorts to <\/span>MST3K<\/span><\/i>, and <\/span>he built a vast archive of such material that was free for public use<\/span><\/a>. Prelinger called these works “Ephemeral Films\u201d, made for specific purposes at specific times, such as advertising, educational, and industrial use.<\/span><\/p>\n

To their creators, these were films without worth beyond their initial purpose, and so they fell into the public\u2019s lap along with works whose copyright had naturally expired or never existed \u2014 a progressively smaller pool as corporations extended their reach and altered copyright laws for their own benefit. Prelinger, on the other hand, warmly encouraged the public to download, transfer, share, and reuse the archive to whatever purpose they saw fit.<\/span><\/p>\n

As a programmer at <\/span>Spectacle<\/b>, a volunteer-run theater<\/span> in Brooklyn, New York<\/span><\/a>\u00a0I tried to take his advice: <\/span>our ongoing <\/span>Ephemera<\/i><\/b> series<\/span><\/a> freely remixes and edits films from the Prelinger Archive, lumping them together on a theme. My most straightforward effort was <\/span>Going To The Chapel<\/i><\/b>, a narrowly focused pre- and post-war look at serious relationships and marriage. The footage was nearly all public domain, save for some home movies of weddings stitched throughout. People are surprised to hear home movies aren\u2019t automatically public domain \u2014 they usually fall in the legal category of \u201cunpublished works\u201d, meaning they\u2019re automatically protected for 70 years after the death of their creator.<\/span><\/p>\n