[LEN-E] "Bergfilm" documentary on arte TV and some other things

[Thomas Köhler]

Hi all,

thanks to you, Luc and Ron, for the info on the "Wege" disc. I suspected 
something like that. And Ron is completely right about the public domain 
situation in the US, of course.  There are two sides to this, as always. 
On the one hand it's perfectly legitimate and a good thing to release an 
unknown old film on disc even if the source materials are not in best 
condition and often in such cases come from 16mm or even 8mm amateur 
prints (or worse: third generation video copies of such prints). There 
are a lot of silent film labels in the US who do this and thus at least 
make some of those rare gems available. The question is only what they 
charge for it, and here's where my difficulties start, especially if you 
consider ebay. In fact, these sellers often make a fortune from material 
that nobody would find even close to acceptable with 'normal' films.  I 
have seen such public domain discs which looked like they were ripped 
from youtube or something.
So in other words: many of these silent public domain films are indeed 
available for free and completely legal download somewhere on the net, 
and I'd advise to look at archive.org or indeed youtube first before 
paying these sellers large sums. Haven't checked for "Wege" yet, though.

Best
Thomas


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