A while back, I posted a link to "The Living Room Candidate," a collection of clips of presidential ads throughout history. The ever-insightful Ernest Miller commented that you cannot download those ads. "Why not? 'Some of the permission obtained to exhibit this material was contingent on the Museum's assurance that the material would not be downloadable, and would not be edited.' This despite the fact that 'Most of the commercials were obtained from various presidential libraries, and are in the public domain' or that US taxpayer dollars paid for at least a portion of the commercials.
See, http://www.corante.com/importance/archives/004957.html "

Thanks for pointing that out and sorry it took me so long to notice the comment. It is certainly a disappointment that material so public in nature is not available in every form possible. And why? One explanation is that the Museum decided that fewer people would actually visit in person were the material available for download, even though more people would be exposed to the material they are charged with disseminating. Another is that the campaigns which contributed material wanted to make sure that the material was not used to combat their campaign--a vain hope, since the quality of Internet downloads is still low, and since the recent material for which this would be an issue is freely available to anyone with a VCR and a TV set. Which brings up a key point about Copyright law. Like all good economic policies, the purpose of the law should be to align the best interests of the individual (within the framework established by the law) with those of society (for whom the law is effectively irrelevant...only the result matters). Current Copyright law fails on that account, and this is certainly an example of that. The recent CBO study neglected this also, excusing it as outside the realm of economics. I heartily disagree. The true economics of society are not particularly well-measured in GDP. Certainly this example proves that true--if viewing the movies at the Museum is an economic activity, why shouldn't viewing them in the privacy of your home over the Internet, or repeatedly once you have saved them to your hard drive be an economic activity. If it contributes value to society in one context, it must do so in another.

--Ari