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Table of Contents
Public Domain
What is Public Domain?
How do you find out if something is in the public domain?
How Do You Find Public Domain Work?
Great Sources for Images
How Can I Use Public Domain Work?
Action Steps
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Public Domain
What is Public Domain?
“In the Public Domain” means “Owned by the Public”. Any intellectual property works that are owned, not by a particular person or company, but by society at large, due to a copyright expiring, being forfeited or being inapplicable are said to be in the Public Domain.
That’s a fancy way of saying that anything in the Public Domain can be used by anyone, for any purpose, in any way.
Some examples of works in the public domain are the plays and poems of Shakespeare, the music of Bach, the philosophical writings of Plato, the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci, the novels of Herman Melville, including Moby Dick, and the early films of Douglas Fairbanks, including The Mark of Zoro and The Three Musketeers.
(You know we had to mention movies, didn’t you!)
(NOTE: In different countries, the copyright laws are different, so make sure you research it in your own country if you live outside the U.S.)
How do you find out if something is in the public domain?
There are some things to look for…
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- Any work published in the United States prior to 1923 is in the public domain. Any work? Yes, any work. You mean even… Yes, even that.
- For works published between 1923 and March 1, 1989, it depends on whether certain rules were observed, such as providing a notice of copyright on the work or renewing the copyright within the legal deadlines. It takes a little bit of looking, but you can find lots of work from that time period that was either not registered for a copyright or that the copyright expired. If you find something published between those years that you think might be in the public domain but are unsure, you can search the government copyright records here: http://www.copyright.gov/records/ – however, these searches are not necessarily complete so you need to tread carefully, especially with film, as the actual film may no longer have a copyright but the music and script may have been properly renewed which means you can’t simply use the movie as it is.
- Anything written and published by the US Government, including informational packets, photos, films, illustration, articles, recordings and more. There is a HUGE amount of work you can mine here, in almost any niche.
Now that you have an idea of what it is…
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How Do You Find Public Domain Work?
There are several places to find great Public Domain work. Here are a few:
The Gutenberg Project:
The easiest place to find public domain work is at the Gutenberg Project – http://www.gutenberg.org/ – which has thousands of public domain work. The Gutenberg Project has hundreds of volunteers who transcribe work in the public domain and make it available to anyone, free of charge, in many different formats.
When you go to their page, you can search by author, title or subject matter. The books all used to be in text format, but now come in text, pdf, eBook, html and others. They usually have Gutenberg information at the beginning and end of the book that must be stripped off before you use it.
The benefit of using Gutenberg is that they have so much available. The disadvantages are that, often, the formatting of the books is crude, words and passages that were underlined, italicized, bolded or indented in the original are often not in these versions, special characters such as those used in foreign words are stripped (for example “cliché” becomes “cliché”), and sometimes there are many typos. For most works, however, these problems don’t really matter or are easily corrected.
The Library of Congress:
The Library of Congress – http://www.loc.gov/index.html – is an amazingly rich source of public domain ontent. There, you can find books, posters, prints and photos, old newspapers (a great source of articles to use!), recordings, movies, maps and more. Not everything on this site is in the public domain, you must check before you use something. The catalogue entry for most items after 1923 will have a section called “Rights Advisory” which will usually give an indication of whether or not you can use it.
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The US Publication Office:
Remember all those ads for pamphlets you could get from an address in Pueblo Colorado? They are now online at http://publications.usa.gov. The publications can usually be downloaded in pdf, can often be viewed as a web page and sometimes (for a small fee) can be sent to you as a printed document. Be careful with these, however. Although much of this information is printed by the US Government and free to use, some is provided by other sources that hold copyright and is simply being distributed by the publication office. On the information page of each publication, it lists the source. If the source is any part of the US Government, you can use it.
The United States Archive:
The United States Archive – http://www.archives.gov/ – has thousand of things you can use. The type of information on this site is a bit more limited, mostly dealing with the history and politics of the United States, but there are many hidden gems.
Great Sources for Images
One of the main things that marketers have trouble with is finding images they can use on their blog posts, in reports, videos and in products. Most of the resources listed above have images you can use, but there are a few more we would like to mention.
USA.Gov Graphics:
You can find great graphics at http://www.usa.gov/Topics/Graphics.shtml. Most of these images are in the public domain. You can find images on almost any subject, in almost any niche here.
Creative Commons:
Creative Commons licenses are not quite public domain, but are worth including here. There are several versions of the Creative Commons license. Usually, all you need to do with this type of work is give proper credit. Occasionally, you don’t have the right to alter the work, but you usually do. What you are allowed to do will be clearly labeled on the page for each item for both of these sites.
There are two main sites where you can find Creative Commons images:
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- Wiki Media – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page – collects images sound and video that uses one of the “Creative Commons” licenses.
- Flikr – http://www.flickr.com/ – on this site, most images can be used as long as you “give attribution” (say who created the image.) On many, you can alter the image and redistribute that alteration. Occasionally, you don’t have the right to use the image without contacting the person who created it.
And More…
You can also find public domain offline at used book stores, flea markets and garage sales, libraries. Your family may have stacks of old magazines and newspapers in grandma’s attic. Look at the dates of those.
With a little searching, you can find many other resources for Public Domain written work, audio, including music, images and even entire motion pictures! Go forth and find some!
The next question, of course, is…
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How Can I Use Public Domain Work?
Now that you know more about Public Domain than you ever thought you would, whatever can you do with it all? Here are a few ideas to get you started, but after that, let your imagination run wild!
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- Turn books, stories, magazine articles, into content for your sites. Use the information for blog posts, short reports, free giveaways and even products. One marketer we know once found a series of self-help books printed in the 1920s in a used book store. He had them all scanned and sold the pdfs of them at great profit. He even found an original newspaper ad for them that he used as the sales page!
- Fill these posts, reports, giveaways and products with public domain images.
- Record the Public Domain work and use the audios as products or giveaways. You can even edit Public Domain music behind them if you have audio editing software.
- You can use public domain as is or shape it to your own liking. We don’t recommend you put your own name as the author of Hamlet, but you could take the information from an article from an early copy of Life Magazine, which started publishing in 1883, and use it as the basis for articles, blog posts or even chapters in a book!
- Create physical products such as tee shirts, mugs, posters and post cards at sites like Zazzle and Cafe Press.
- Publish classic books as pdfs when a movie of one is about to be released!
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Action Steps
Spend some time looking at some of the different Public Domain sources.
Specifically search for items in your niche.
Find at least one story, article or book that you can use.
Turn that story, article or book into either a blog post, a short report or a product.
Find at least two images that you can use at some point on your blog and save them on your computer for future use.
Next week:
Act One Review!
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