Antarctica is Earth's coolest continent,
and most complicatedly claimed continent.
Yet sadly has no official flag to unite her.
Nay, you might say. There's this!
And that flag is Antarctica-associated,
but it's not official official,
and comes with an ownership asterisk we must attend to.
But first, Antarctica doesn't have an official flag because
she's not an official country.
Yes, humans have “settled”,
depending on how much you want to stretch that word,
on the ice sheet, with scientific outposts,
but each is operated by a parent country,
protecting their somewhat precarious claims,
so not really looking for a new banner to band everyone behind.
Thus, there are no Antarctic citizens to officiate anything.
But, who cares?
People everywheres want to fly flags,
and come on, the continent has cried out for one,
right from the first in 1929
when an early research vessel flew a white sheet
as a flag of courtesy for passing through Antarctica's waters.
Even though there were naught but penguins to appreciate the gesture.
T’was done just for the fun of flying a flag
with what the ship happened to have on hand.
But since this rather literal representation of the snow-covered continent
is not the most inspired design, it didn’t catch on
and penguins only spotted it sporadically on subsequent ships.
And it stayed that way until 1997,
with a curious development as a company, Multimedia Corporation,
was developing a video game.
The 3D World Atlas.
And yes, for nerdy nineties kids, a digital atlas totally counted as a game.
Multi Co noticed Antarctica's flag absence and deputized a designer to draw one.
Who took a cue from the U.N.
which on their flag views the world from atop
so Antarctica would be the same from abottom
and borrowed the same colors as a nod to neutrality.
So it was through this game that this design debuted to young flag fans everywhere.
Including some who would grow up to end up on Antarctica, ‘eh?
And it's a great flag and I'm not here to FUD it,
buuuut it’s origin does raise some questions of copyright.
Unlike the original white sheet, uncopyrightable, as it's nothing
and old enough to be in the public domain anyway.
Not so with the 1997 design.
And while it’s creator makes no claim to copyright,
saying the flag is de facto public domain,
but what usually happens when a company commissions content,
is the company controls that content’s copyright.
So of course, on finding this out,
one might think to email Multimedia Corporation about it,
but they went bust. And now, with no one to ask
it becomes a question of who could claim to claim the copyright.
[curiously] How hard could that be to find out?
And, in this moment, standing at the threshold of a research question
that could easily cost months of my life,
I swore to myself
So I just let myself do a bit of basic Bing-ing.
Ugh, that sounds very strange to say.
And tracked Multimedia Corporation and their
un-Bing-able, hmm, name through two potential lines of ownership.
One through multiple corporate asset, acquisitions, and name changes
that ended up in a Malta company that
seemingly has nothing to do with video games and
the other line led to E.A….
everyone’s favorite developer, dedicated to the
who was the original distributor of the Atlas.
Under what terms, I didn’t ask, because I did not wish to
open their evil eye upon any of this,
and doubtless neither of these companies
have heard anything about the Atlas and its flag so,
let’s all just promise to keep it that way, shall we?
Great.
Now we can finally talk about what happened next.
See, in 2018, a new Antarctic flag, public domain, came on the scene.
It starts with the snow and ice white sheet from before,
but adds above the dark skies that dominate the continent for six months a year.
A mountain in the center uplifts, for unlike in the north,
there's an actual land under the ice,
and it casts a shadow to create the symbol of a compass pointing south.
Which, as a bonus, makes this design mirror the northern most flag on the northern most continent
just with flipped color placement for flipped pole placement.
Very satisfying and unique among flags.
It creates a 3D effect that gives just touch of a technocool,
appropriate with how much tech was needed to “conquer”
this coolest continent.
And it's totally not, but I'm just going to call it,
[gleefully] that this 3D effect is also a nod to the 3D World Atlas,
connecting this flag to both of its forebearers.
Perfect.
I could talk about flags all day, but I swore to keep it short.
So I just wanted to let everyone know,
that when you spot this rare flag, it is of Antarctica.
So that for anyone watching this video there
when you see your flag fly high
to know that others know how awesome it is
and have that brighten a day out of six months of dark.
[earthy music]