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 were named Time Man of the Year. This is when video came to the Internet.

Well, not all the Internet.

Back in Washington, D.C. was an agency called the National Technical Information Service, NTIS, a government profit center tasked with, among other things, being the official retailer of videos from all across the government.

A look at the NTIS web site showed thousands of videos from 54 different federal agencies. There was all sorts of useful stuff—none of it viewable on the Internet—like training materials for volunteer firefighters from the U.S. Fire Academy.

But the prices! Ooh la la! Talk about champagne wishes and caviar dreams! An Ellis Island documentary—"Island of Hope, Island of Tears"—cost $55 for a 29-minute VHS tape.

"The Time of Apollo" from NASA? $50 for 28 minutes. I forked over $336, ordered some tapes, and posted them to YouTube and the Internet Archive. "John F. Kennedy: Years of LighteningLightning [sic]," from the U.S. Information Agency. "Firefighter Safety and Survival" from the U.S. Fire Academy, and "Day of the Killer Tornados" from FEMA.

The nice thing about the U.S. government is pretty much anything they produce is called a "Work of the Government" and that means, at the federal level, it is public domain. There are a couple of exceptions and grey areas, but the basic rule is no copyright.