What Is The Public Domain ?
What is the public domain and where do you find it ?
Many people are confused when it comes to figuring out what content and material is up for grabs, and creations that are protected and prevented from being distributed or sold.
Furthermore, with terms like “Creative Commons” and “Open Source”, it can add even more confusion to the mix, so to help you understand exactly what public domain is, here is a brief overview from Wikipedia:
“The public domain is a range of abstract materials—commonly referred to as intellectual property, which are not owned or controlled by anyone.
The term indicates that these materials are therefore “public property”, and available for anyone to use for any purpose.”
Now, this doesn’t mean that everything you find online or offline is copyright free, in fact, it means the complete opposite. In fact, if you attempt to utilize content that is protected, you are likely to be contacted and charged with copyright infringement.
Further, even content that does not indicate it is copyright protected is not necessarily up for grabs, either.
In fact, the law states that writers and content developers aren’t even required to state that their material is protected by copyright (in effect since 1989), in order for their work to actually be protected.
I will give more information about this in a post coming shortly