What is and public domain copyright?

Answer 1

Real Property

As it pertains to land in America, the public domain is land within the boundaries of the United States which has never been titled and is therefore held by the US Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management as its custodial owner.

Intellectual Property

In terms of intellectual property "public domain" refers to items that have no restrictions of use due to expiration of legal controls (patents, trademarks, copyright). Public domain is when no one any longer holds the rights to some type of work. It can be a book, photo, music, movie, TV show, etc. You can do whatever you want to with a public domain work without fear of copyright infringement.

A copyright is supposed to expire 75 after the work is published. However, due to lobbying by corporations, especially Disney, that has been changed and the the cut off for works being transferred to the public domain is held at 1923 until 2019. This means that any work, if published before 1923, is automatically in the public domain. However there are several works after this period that have fallen into public domain because until 1978, when the laws were changed, you were forced to explicitly show the copyright next to the name of your work if shown in public (such as the title of a movie). Failure to do so would result in the movie falling into public domain. Some of the movies that are in public domain: Night of the Living Dead (1968), Reefer Madness (1936), and Phantom of the Opera (1925).

All works created or registered before 1923 and and works created/registered before 1964 and not renewed in a timely manner are currently in the public domain.

Answer 2

Materials in the public domain are not protected by copyright. They may be exempt from protection, as government works; the term of protection may have expired; or the creator may have donated the work to the public domain.

Answer 3

Public domain is the body of works no longer protected by copyright, which can be freely used by anyone for anything and it will not violate copyright law.

However, some types of works include other rights such as trademarks or recognizable images of living individuals, which could be restricted under other laws.

Answer 4

A public domain book is a piece of literature which is so old that copyright has expired on it. These books are usually referred to as "classic" books and are often sold by different publishers and are also freely available online. Books like Huckleberry Finn, older translations of The Bible and The Canterbury Tales are all examples of books that are in the public domain.

Another class of books in the public domain in the USA includes anything that is a work of the officers or agents of the US government, created within the scope of their official duties. 17 USC § 105.

Answer 5

If a work is in the public domain, it would not require a license.

If the license itself (i.e., the words in the contract) has been published prior to 1923, or without the necessary copyright notice, or otherwise without copyright, then that would also be a "public domain license", meaning anyone could copy it without fear of copyright laws being used against them.

Answer 6

Copyright protection is for a limited time; once the term expires, materials enter the public domain, meaning they can be used by anyone for any purpose.