A History Of The World According to Getty Images by Richard Misek, 2020, 19 min.
Synopsis
How can something in the public domain not be publicly available? A critical investigation of public domain - a legal term that has nothing to do with free access or public availability - that usese powerhouse commercial archive Getty Images as its example. If the world's visual history remains locked behind a paywall, who will ever see it?
My thoughts on it
I have always held a deep distaste towards the current state of our free use and public domain laws, especially after having entering the academic space. This movie/short/project was shown at a festival I was working on and it took me completely by surprise. I said it then and will say it again, it is like someone saw all my grief to do with this subject and compiled it into neat 19 minutes. Overall, it is a great study of how ownership works and how limited we are as people for the concept of paywalling public domain.
Follow up media
The lawsuit against Internet Archive and its project Open Library
DotCommunist Manifesto