What’s the public domain? It’s the term for works that are free of particular legal restrictions, and thus available for the public to use. The term is particularly used in copyright circles, but is also seen in discussing patents and trademarks.
In copyright terms, the public domain is specific to particular countries, and is not necessarily public domain in other countries. For instance, many US-published works are already in the public domain in Australia (which has a life + 50 years term) even though they are still in the copyright closet in the US (which has a life + 70 years term).
Works enter the public domain in the US on January 1 of each year, with an entire years’ worth of works coming in all at once. Creators, librarians, and researchers increasingly celebrate January 1 as Public Domain Day, debuting collections of works previously hard to obtain, under-appreciated or unknown, and finally free for creative production and use.
How do I know if a work is in the public domain?
Determining whether a work is or is not in the public domain can be simple, or tricky, depending on how a particular country has extended copyright terms to different works. In the US, Cornell University has long maintained a popular chart for assessing the public domain status of published and unpublished works in various media:
- The Cornell University, “Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States”, chart, https://copyright.cornell.edu/publicdomain
Sometimes a work is tricky because it’s not clear who authored it, or when it was published, or there are conflicting claims between estates or other legal questions. If you can’t tell whether a work is in the public domain or not, or can’t get through to the possible rightsholder, then we call those works orphan works (some commentators have called them “hostage works”). In the US, check out the Best Practices for Fair Use of Orphan Works for help figuring out what you may be able to do with those works. A few countries, and the EU, have passed legislation and directives establishing parameters for using orphan works.
- Best Practices in Fair Use for Orphan Works
- Public domain caselaw: A review of cases from Sherlock Holmes to Happy Birthday
What can I do with works in the public domain?
(Almost) anything you want! Being in the public domain means that a work is free from copyright restrictions. In the US, that means you can reproduce or share copies of a public domain work, translate and make other derivative works from it, and make public performances and displays of it.
However, watch out for situations where other countries’ rights might come into play, because they might be a little different than the rights in the US. In particular, watch out for moral rights — these most often require attribution to the original creator, but if you’re working with a non-US work or in a non-US forum, pay particular attention to the laws of that country. Attribution is good practice anyway!
Sources for public domain content and commentary:
- Center for the Study of the Public Domain, Duke University
- Public Domain Review, a journal on and about the public domain
- Internet Archive, a great way to find public domain resources
- Project Gutenberg, one of the oldest and most famous publishers of public domain texts
- HathiTrust, a library project that makes available copies of public domain books. (Logging in through an institutional membership provides more access.)
- Public Domain Day, UMass Amherst Libraries