The Public Domain: How to Find & Use Copyright-Free Writings, Music, Art & More

Reviews

Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-08-23
Summary: "Know Your Rights -- Even as Big Media is Chipping Away at Them"

A copyright is the "right to copy." Only the owner of a copyright (to a book, article, song, film, etc.) can copy that book, etc., or give others (such as a publisher) permission to copy it.

However, the U.S. Constitution says that copyrights must EXPIRE after a LIMITED TIME (Article 1, Section 8), whereupon the work becomes PUBLIC DOMAIN. Then you, the public, are free to download that song, or write new Sherlock Holmes stories, or perform Shakespeare or Mozart.

Copyright's "limited time" has been repeatedly extended -- often due to big media lobbying. The 1790 Copyright Act set copyright protection at 14 years, renewable for another 14 years. By 1909, copyrights lasted 28 years, renewable for another 28. In 1976 copyright was set for "the life of the author plus 50 years," or 75 years for corporate owners. In 1998 copyright was extended to "life of the author plus 70 years," or 95 years for corporate owners.

Steve Forbes, of Forbes magazine, said of the 1998 extension: "It is fitting and proper that your creations be protected by law for your lifetime and a reasonable period afterward. But there is no justification for what Congress has been doing: transforming a limited monopoly into an unlimited one. Creativity and culture are enhanced by having works ultimately become public domain, particularly with the advent of the Internet."

Law professor, and Constitutional expert, Lawrence Lessig joined others in a lawsuit against the 1998 copyright windfall giveaway to big media. But in 2003, the Supreme Court rubber-stamped President Clinton and the Republican Congress's sweetheart gift to big media -- extending by decades the term before which a work enters the public domain.

This book not only provides guidelines to identifying works that ARE in the public domain, it's full of interesting and useful information, such as in its section on "The Looting of the Public Domain," which says: "Is it illegal to claim a copyright in a public domain work? Yes, it is, but the penalties for violations are laughably small. Claiming copyrights in public domain works is a federal crime, but the maximum penalty for engaging in this sort of criminal conduct is a fine of $2,500. 17 U.S.C. Section 506(c). Moreover, violators are rarely prosecuted."

Ever see those FBI warnings on DVDs? Severe penalties if you infringe a copyright owned by some media company. But if they release some film or book that's in the public domain, and lie by putting a bogus copyright notice on it, well, that's a slap on the wrist.

This book continues: "In effect, the federal government encourages spurious copyright claims. The potential economic rewards for making such claims are great, while the possibility of getting caught and paying a price is small. This book will help you recognize when copyright claims are, in fact, spurious."

As this book makes clear, it's often difficult to determine what works are in the public domain. It not only depends on how old a work is, but on whether its copyright was renewed (required, if registered pre-1978), or when it was first published, or, if it was never published, then what year the author died.

This book reveals that the U.S. Copyright Office can NOT tell you what's in the public domain and what isn't. They have no such master database. You must research each work on your own.

The book says: "it is relatively easy to research renewals for works published during 1950-1963, because the records are available online. But researching works published during 1923-1949 can be harder, because you may have to manually search through the U.S. Copyright office Catalog of Copyright Entries in a library that has a copy or at the Copyright Office in Washington D.C."

If you can't do that, you can hire the Copyright Office to do it for you ($165 an hour) or hire someone else, possibly at a cheaper rate.

Works created by government employees as part of their jobs are usually in the public domain. Usually.

If a museum holds a public domain painting, you may still be required to get permission to take or publish a photo of it, because the museum controls "access" to the painting.

This book discusses too many issues to mention: books, music, art, photography, films, TV, software, architecture, maps, choreography, databases, tiles, and foreign copyright registrations (a work may be protected in one country, but not in another.) Also, other legal theories by which a work can be protected: trade secrets, trademarks, right of privacy, right of publicty, etc.

Public domain should NOT be confused with FAIR USE.

The Fair Use doctrine, rooted in the First Amendment, lets you copy excerpts from PROTECTED works for purposes of news, education, research, criticism, and commentary. It also permits parodies. It's a complex doctrine because the law only gives guidelines -- you don't know if it's Fair Use until you're in court. Which means Fair Use is often decided by who can afford an expensive lawsuit.

Like public domain, Big Media has been working to erode Fair Use. In 1940, a New York federal district court ruled that it was Fair Use for authors to freely excerpt song lyrics in fiction (Broadway Music Corp. v. F-R Publishing Crop, 31 F.Supp. 817 (D.C.N.Y. 1940, now SDNY)). Excerpting a few lines of lyrics is a way for authors to comment on pop culture.

However, despite the favorable ruling, today it is industry practice to pay a license fee for even one line of poetry or lyric. The issue -- is copying a few lines of lyrics of poetry Fair Use? -- never went up to the Supreme Court, so the question remains unresolved. And rather than fight music publishers' lawyers, authors instead surrendered their Fair Use rights.

This book covers Fair Use, but only a little. It's not the main topic. This is a fine book to learn your Public Domain rights. But you'll want another book to really get the take on your Fair Use rights.

Rating: 4 / 5
Date: 2010-07-22
Summary: "Great primer on IPR issues"

The title of this book is a bit misleading, it's not so much a guide to finding free content as an explanation of the many issues involved in each type of intellectual property. For example the book explains that although a painting might be in the public domain, not every photograph of it is. To use a painting you may have to get permission from the owner to take a professional picture.

I keep this book handy at work for when IPR issues come up. It's certainly useful and well-written.

Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-07-22
Summary: "Covers a lot of ground"

I run a weekly pub quiz and am always wondering what photos and sound clips I can legally use. This book answered those questions and a lot more.

I thought I was just going to read the sections pertinent to my copyright and fair-use concerns, but I ended up reading the entire book. The prose isn't exactly sizzling, but it stays clear of the legalese almost all the time, which is a darn good thing.

I normally don't give out five stars, but this book fully delivers on what it promises, at least it did for me.

Rating: 4 / 5
Date: 2010-07-22
Summary: "Everything You Need to Know About Public Domain"

If you don't know, public domain content is basically anything that isn't protected by copyright and is free to use. This includes all manner of material from books and magazines, to photographs, movies, music and more.

The issue in the U.S. is that copyright laws have changed numerous times throughout the years, so it can be difficult know is something is still under protection or not. This book has everything you need to know about copyright law to understand if a piece is in the public domain or not. Even better, it contains a number or resources for locating public domain works.

As with most NOLO publications, you do not have to be a lawyer to understand the text. The information and presentation are top notch. I highly recommend this resource for anybody who works with content or needs to understand public domain.

Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-07-17
Summary: "Excellent one-volume reference on public domain material..."

My interest in public domain is limited, since I'm a writer who frequently uses works from other writers as epigrams in my own fictional works (always credited, of course). I've also recently become involved in writing a play about a poet,some of whose works are in the public domain, while others are P.D. in the United Kingdom but not in the United States, so it's a pretty murky territory to explore. I've found Stephen Fishman's book to be very helpful, if not in the specifics of a single writer, at least in the generalities of public domain information. There's so much to be found in this volume that I have no use for everything in it, but what I do need to discover is always there (or Fishman at least points me in the right direction on the Internet to find out what I need). I'm sure this is a book I'll be returning to time and again, and it will be on that "always near to hand" pile right by my desk.