Amazon to Copy and Sell Archives' Footage
From the Washington Post:
The National Archives and Records Administration announced yesterday that it has reached a non-exclusive agreement with Amazon.com and one of its subsidiaries to reproduce and sell to the public copies of thousands of historic films and videotapes in the Archives' holdings.The arrangement allows Amazon and a California subsidiary, CustomFlix Labs, to make digitized copies of some of history's most famous, and infamous, footage and make them available in DVD form for purchase via the Internet.
Archives and CustomFlix officials stressed yesterday that the agreement is non-exclusive, unlike the controversial semi-exclusive deal the Smithsonian Institution struck recently with the cable television network Showtime.