Thursday, April 7, 2011

Internet Archive and Free Movies

I may be the only one who hasn't heard of this website, but just in case, I want to tell you about it.

After watching an old Zasu Pitts movie called Niagara Falls I'd found cheap at my pharmacy one day, I went to http://www.imdb.com/ as I usually do after watching a movie, old or new, to read the details and to answer questions like, "who was that familiar looking actor?" Also, imdb.com is a fun place to find movie goofs if you like that kind of thing.

I linked to Niagara Falls, learned it was a 1941 movie, read about the actors, and read some of the comments. Then I noticed a link to something called Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org/)  where the entire movie was available to download or view free.

Since I love old movies, I went there to check it out. Here's the information from About IA page:

The Internet Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that was founded to build an Internet library. Its purposes include offering permanent access for researchers, historians, scholars, people with disabilities, and the general public to historical collections that exist in digital format. Founded in 1996 and located in San Francisco, the Archive has been receiving data donations from Alexa Internet and others. In late 1999, the organization started to grow to include more well-rounded collections. Now the Internet Archive includes texts, audio, moving images, and software as well as archived web pages in our collections, and provides specialized services for adaptive reading and information access for the blind and other persons with disabilities.
The Moving Images section has a link to the Top 40 best free legal movies you can download right now that you may want to check. You can also search for movies alphabetically or by category.

The Archived Web Page section includes the Internet Archive Way Back Machine where I was able to view some of my own web pages from the past. Austin Lyric Opera Chorus (AloChorus.org), for example, no longer exists, but I was able to go back to the year 2000 and see 114 iterations of the site. Amazing.

If you find this website useful, you may want to make a contribution. See http://www.archive.org/donate/ for details.

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