Films In The Public Domain

The Internet Archive has shit-tons of stuff in the public domain...


https://archive.org/details/GoForBroke

"Is it legal for someone to be paid for delivering these films?"

Yes.

"It seems to me that if I "buy" this film today, Amazon can cancel it tomorrow and not have to refund me anything."

Why do you think they could do that? If they did, you would have recourse, such as getting a refund through your credit card company.

"Any IP lawyers here?"

So-called "IP" is irrelevant to public domain materials. Copyright is merely a restriction on who is legally allowed to copy/sell something. If there's no copyright, then anyone can copy/sell it, or give it away for free if they want to. Look at all the classic works of literature that are in public domain. That doesn't mean it's going to be free if you walk into a book store looking for, say, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. On the other hand, you can read it or download it online for free because someone has decided to make it available for free, which is perfectly legal to do:

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76

But I doubt you'll find anyone giving it away for free in book form, because printing and binding books costs quite a bit of money. Even if there's nothing printed on the pages at all (such as a diary/journal), it's still not going to be free.

If a film enters public domain, it doesn't stop anyone from selling it as long as someone is willing to pay for it.. But they don't need permission or owe the producers a dime to do it.

Night of the Living Dead has been in public domain due to copyright error. Some companies actually copy the versions on Youtube and make physical media which they then sell.

I was looking for The Bad Seed (1956) on YouTube, where it's £10 to buy. Went to Internet Archive instead and watched it for free.
It's a great film too.