Pond5 is a media clips for media makers site that PSA has been using for background clips and other potential uses in our What is Learning Today project.
Generally, these are short… less than a minute up to five minutes or so… clips of interest searchable for a broad range of topics. And then downloadable for a fee or for free. Pond5 is the middle man creating the marketplace between those who made them and those who want to buy them.
Some are very affordable at $5 or 10….some are up near $1k or more. Available in a range of different file types; and once you’ve bought them they are “royalty free” meaning can be used as “your own” for any purpose incorporated in a project…except to turn around and then resell them as your own clips.
Now they are starting something new but similar: a free archive that will offer similarly well organized and royalty free access to the historical archives of the world. That’s a big undertaking, they are talking about “Public Domain”…but as we know from other archives there’s a lot of that just at US government sites.
They don’t appear to have all that archived at Pond5 as yet. We’ll see how far along they get with this project at Pond5, or whether its more flash than comprehensiveness.