Preserving the Past

I've mentioned the Internet Archive before; it's a site that keeps a whole heck of a lot of files from the past, including web pages, videos, documents, audio recordings, images, etc. It's massive. It's also awesome. There are pulp magazines galore, as well as a huge number of old movies that are now in the public domain, even in the United States (which has an insane 95-year copyright law). And it's all free.

There are rumors that certain people are planning to shut down the Archive because of 'copyright' issues. The problem with these issues is that the internet is international; copyright in Canada is the author's life plus fifty years. If the new USMCA agreement is ratified, that will extend to life plus seventy years. As a writer, I'm fine with that, since it means that my grandkids will still be getting royalties on what I write, long after I'm gone.

Still, the issue of differing copyright laws means that there are loopholes to get things in North America that are public domain elsewhere, but still under copyright here. So, if people are planning to shut down sites that carry public domain materials like old movies, magazines and music, that's going to be a significant loss, and it will just mean more pirating will happen. Sure, not too many people are using torrent sites for Charlie Chaplin shorts, but there is a demographic that wants that sort of thing available, and it should be. After all, using Chaplin as an example, his first film appearances (in short, one-reel Mack Sennett comedies) were released in 1914, one hundred and six years ago. Why should we lose access to those in sweeping site shutdowns, when they've been in the public domain for more than a decade?

Maybe nothing will happen; it might just be a lot of talk. But just in case, I'm grabbing what I want from the public domain stuff while I still can. There's gold in them thar hills, folks. Treasures rich and wondrous of a bygone era, when everything in movies was new, and people were still fascinated by a simple one-minute reel of a train going by, or grainy footage of an airplane flying a few hundred feet in the air. Creative geniuses like DeMille, Griffith, Chaplin, Pickford, Fairbanks, Sennett, and many more, names that are forgotten in our time, or at least remembered more dimly.

And with today's cancel-culture in full swing, there's a very real danger that these treasures will be snatched away; look at what's happened with the most popular and profitable movie in history, Gone With the Wind. Can you imagine what will happen when those people find out about Birth of a Nation, or Amos & Andy, or Warner Bros. Bosko cartoons? It's not going to be pretty, folks.

Here's the thing: We have to preserve the past so we can pass on its lessons to our own children. Not knowing history is what's gotten us to where we are, where we are watching a twenty-first century remake of the French Revolution. How long before the guillotines are erected once again? Hyperbole? I hope so, but who knows what's going to happen?

I've mentioned before that I study history; it's a fascinating subject, and very important. In fact, I just did two weeks on the French Revolution and its aftermath, and it's not something I want to experience myself. Neither do you, trust me. But the signs are there, if you know what to look for. Rejection of religion and establishment politics, mobs in the streets tearing down anything that might pose a threat to the new way of thinking, executions...today, so far, the executions are metaphorical; people aren't being killed, but they are being silenced.

Let's face it: Today's movies are great with the special effects and big explosions, but the stories themselves just aren't as good. Sure, the public domain movies are silent, or just have a tinny piano soundtrack to go along with them, but the stories are great. They had to be, because the technology wasn't there yet to go wild the way they do today. Same with the writing, which was chock-full of imaginative scenes that would be too expensive to film even with modern special effects tech, and plots that to us might seem cliché, but were original at the time they were written.

I know, I know; I talk a lot about things that happened decades or even centuries ago, but that's because, as I said already, history is critical to understanding the present. And the modern history books just don't cut the mustard, especially the texts in schools (if they even teach history now, which isn't always certain). Sure, the past had its share of issues, but people forget that there was a lot of good, too. And erasing the past just to get rid of the bad stuff will eliminate the good, as well. And that won't do anyone any favors.

That's not to say that there isn't anything worthwhile to read or watch today, but what you're looking for won't be found in the big publishers or in Hollywood. You'll find it in the indies, where writers, musicians and even filmmakers can be free to create whatever they want without the restrictions placed on them by the corporations that run publishing, music, etc. Guys like Brian Niemeier, Larry Correia, John Del Arroz, and dozens of others, writing books that are just plain fun to read, without being pigeonholed into specific genres.

Oh, and I write that sort of thing, too. Check out my first fantasy novel, Arrival, available at Amazon in both e-book and paperback. Try it; you might like it.