The Internet Movie Database, now a commercially managed project and a very popular Internet destination, started as a volunteer effort by a few folks on Usenet. It was all hand-managed lists of actors and directors from 1989 until 1993, when a database was set up with an email interface to collect submissions. The database was given a web interface later that year and quickly received "tens of thousands of requests each *day*" (quite a bit for a volunteer project even by today's standards, but this was 1993). The data was always freely available to download, and there was plenty of software to search the database locally on your computer. In 1996, IMDb "became a sponsorship and advertising supported service."

The Movie Database FAQ from 1997 includes the transition of IMDb into a commercial entity, and does not appear to betray the 1994 version, so is probably the best history up to that point. What I don't see is a discussion of who owns the copyright to the information collected prior to the 1996 incorporation. Most of the FAQ, especially question 5, implies that almost all of the work to collect the information was done by a small group of people that all became part of Internet Movie Database, Inc., largely from "direct sources". I have little doubt that this is the case after the 1996 incorporation, and I'd guess that by then they had an explicit copyright policy that took control over all volunteer submissions (like they do now). And I would assume most of the current database represents work by the company and not by volunteers.

IMDb.com still offers partial database dumps, but claims copyright on all of the files provided and strongly restricts online use beyond a few entries to paid licensees. They claim copyright back to 1990, which would be fine if they had agreements with all of the original creators. I don't see any evidence that the project had a copyright policy that took control over third-party submissions before 1996. The files they are providing certainly contain legitimately copyrighted data, but I wonder if there are datasets out there that fall outside of IMDb's legitimate copyright claims.