Can You Make Money With Public Domain Movies?

[Damon Wayans]

When most people think of works that are in the public domain, they
usually think of books or other printed items such as sheet music and
old magazines. They might be surprised to find that there are
Hollywood movies, cartoons, old TV shows and tons of educational and
instructional films in the public domain as well.
More and more of these copyright-free films are showing up both on-
and off-line.
You might have seen some of these films and TV shows selling for as
little as a dollar each in your local Target or at from a stand near
the checkout line of your favorite supermarket.
Numerous sites have sprung up on the Internet where you can download
movies for free or cheap. This is entirely legal to download since any
copyright these works might have had (and some never had any) has
expired.
It might seem that with so many public domain movies becoming
available at practically no cost, there would be little or no profit
to a would-be entrepreneur wanting to make money in this field. Not
so.
Ever see that classic--and unintentionally hilarious--"Duck and Cover"
film, which told schoolkids in the 1950s how to survive an atomic bomb
simply by crawling under their desks? Since it was made at taxpayer
expense, "Duck and Cover" is in the public domain. (Works of the U.S.
government are excluded from copyright law and therefore are
considered to be in the public domain.)
The thing is, there are probably hundreds or thousands of government
or industrial films with a "camp" appeal similar to "Duck and Cover,"
and that could be made available, either on DVD or as a download. Your
challenge: Repackage these films and present them in such a way that
people will be glad to pay you to view them.
The Library of Congress, through its "American Memory" site, has
started putting old films online. It's a good bet that many people
don't know this, so someone--maybe you?-- could grab some of them and
find a creative way to repackage and sell them.
There are other online archives of PD films as well; just do a search
for "public domain movies" and see what you can find. Especially
recommended: the "moving images" section of the archives.org site. You
will be astounded at what you can find there, and most of it is free
to re-use as you like.
In my opinion, one of the biggest growth areas for public domain video
publishing right now is in making this content available for the iPod.
The new generation of video iPods has taken the world by storm.
Entrepreneurs who jump into the business of converting movies (both
public domain and commercial) into iPod format stand to make a bundle
over the coming months.

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