This is really lovely. I think it's pretty obvious that it bases on sources like Internet Archive and the Library of Congress, but it does add value.

I just wonder if it can survive - is there a business model here? If not, it's just a tech demo and then it doesn't have value as the hosted version, it would have it if the whole processing/indexing pipeline was open sourced so that anyone can host it themselves and pay for their own infrastructure.

> is there a business model

the "business value" (aka legal extortion) is obviously to extract rent from information that was previously free (as in free speech), and that is not licensed.

I don't understand your comprehension problems.

However, I wouldn't categorically deny positive external effects. These are exotic, because or politics and economy are based on negative external effects, violence and corrruption.

However, there are positive "externalities" (a different word for the woo of pseudo-scientifical "economic theories, that is easy to overlook).

But in the end, the plausible results are simple. "Value" comes from

- natural resources - extortion, if there is no sufficient legal boundary - marginal improvements in improving extortion and extraction efficiency

See, I saved you an MBA there.

This is a much worse version of destockd.

https://www.destockd.com/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49689005 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49599206

Just found an amateur video of San Francisco from 1940: https://www.movingimagearchive.com/sources/amateur-film-san-...

And 1932! https://www.movingimagearchive.com/sources/san-francisco-by-...

Sounds rally cool. How and where are the movie clips collected, and how is it verified that they are in public domain?

Many of these are sourced from the US Government, which means public domain. They also have links to the sources below so you can verify source and copyright.

This looks like a collection of clips from the Internet Archive. "General Aviation - Fact or Fiction" is on the Moving Image Archive at [1], and the full version is in the Internet Archive at [2]. Most of the content is from the Internet Archive. What's the point?

At least they don't slap their logo on public domain material, like Periscope Films does.

[1] https://www.movingimagearchive.com/sources/general-aviation-...

[2] https://archive.org/details/gov.ntis.ava12749vnb

Depending on how they serve these clips (do they save them locally etc.) the point could be to take load off the internet archive.

The other point might be to provide better search capabilities than IA, also taking load off. Sometimes verifying something actually is Public Domain on IA can be work in itself, putting more work on a primary resource. In short it seems to me these people are doing a good thing.

BTW they don't hide the source of the videos. Scrolling down on the video page links to the collection and source.

I don't see how to access the search function. All I see are example videos.

Right above the thumbnails is a search input. On the top right is also a link that says "Search" that takes you to it.