6 Public Domain
This chapter originally appeared in PressBooks’ K-12 Article ‘Technology Integration’ by Royce Kimmons. The article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (Links to an external site.), except where otherwise noted.
Public Domain
Copyright law varies from country to country, but in the US, public domain (Links to an external site.) is a technical term referring to works that are not subject to copyright protection.
Categories
In general, there are three groups of works that are in the public domain:
Old works for which the copyright has expired;
Exempt works that may not be copyrighted or that were created under certain conditions;
Any works that have been released to the public domain by their authors.
Old Works
Under the current US copyright law, any copyrighted work will automatically pass into the public domain 70 years after the death of the author. In general terms, this means that virtually all classics or materials older than 120 years or so are in the public domain. To determine if a specific work is in the public domain, however, you should find out when the author died and add 70 years in order to determine the date at which copyright expires. This time frame has gradually been lengthened in US history, so some works may still be in the public domain that were created less than 70 years ago.
For instance, the John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara movie McLintock! passed into the public domain in 1994 (Links to an external site.).
Exempt Works
Copyright can only be applied to specific types of works (e.g., books, movies, images) and cannot be applied to general knowledge. For this reason, you do not need to cite anyone when you state a fact (e.g., “Jupiter is a planet”).
Works may also be exempt from copyright if they are created under certain conditions of employment. The most common example of this is when US federal employees create works as part of their jobs (e.g., active duty servicemen and women in the armed forces). Works that these individuals create (e.g., photos taken) may be placed in the public domain by virtue of their employment.
Released Works
Any author of a work may willingly choose to release that work into the public domain by simply labelling the work (e.g., “this work is in the public domain”). By doing so, the author gives anyone (e.g., individuals, corporations) the right to use their work for any purpose, without limitation or attribution.
Use
Since they are not subject to copyright protection, public domain works may be used for anything and may even be included in derivative works and may be sold. There are no restrictions on how these works may be used, so citations are not generally needed. However, if you are using public domain content in your own work, it would be helpful for others to know what parts are public domain so that they know how they might also reuse and remix your content.
Public Domain Repositories
Project Gutenberg (Links to an external site.)
Army Photos (Links to an external site.)
Library of Congress (Links to an external site.)
Internet Archive (Links to an external site.)
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Digital Library (Links to an external site.)
Digital Public Library of America (Links to an external site.)
“Open” Resources
The terms “open” and “free” colloquially have many meanings. “Free” generally has two that may be best understood by referring to their latin equivalents: gratis and libre. In the context of openly licensed materials or open educational resources (OER), gratis means that content and resources are provided at no cost. Libre means that you are free to do what you want with these resources.
As an example of this distinction, you may find a website with “free” videos or another teacher may give you a set of old textbooks for “free” (i.e. gratis), but you are not then able to do whatever you want with those videos and textbooks (i.e. not libre). Similarly, Facebook is a gratis service, because you do not pay a fee to use it, but it is not a libre service, because you do not have access to download, delete, or control your data within Facebook. This is an important distinction, because many gratis resources are not libre, and when we talk about openness, we mean both gratis and libre.
That is, Gratis + Libre = Open.
Hilton III, J., Wiley, D., Stein, J., & Johnson, A. (2010). The four ‘R’s of openness and ALMS analysis: frameworks for open educational resources (Links to an external site.). Open Learning, 25(1), 37-44.
Open Licensing
Sometimes authors of creative works who want to share them openly want to maintain some control over what others can do with their work. Open licenses (Links to an external site.) have arisen as a means for openly sharing content while at the same time preserving desired rights to the author. Open licenses find a nice balance between the restrictions of copyright and the unfettered freedoms of public domain, making them a good option for anyone desiring to share their work with others.
Authors of creative works have the right to release those works under any license they choose (except in cases where they have signed over that right to a publisher, employer, etc.). The table below provides three examples of common open licenses.
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Common Open Licenses |
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Name |
Image |
Links |
|
Creative Commons |
|
|
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GNU General Public License (GNU-GPL) |
|
GNU License (Links to an external site.) Wikipedia: GNU General Public License (Links to an external site.) |
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MIT License |
|
|
Finding Resources
In general, copyleft and creative commons licenses value open practices in that they seek to allow for works to be reused, redistributed, revised, and remixed (Links to an external site.), but licenses vary based upon what is required of the user to do so legally. For instance, the Creative Commons Attribution license (or CC-BY (Links to an external site.)) requires the user of the work to give appropriate credit, to provide links to the license, and to not suggest that the original author endorses any new use of the resource. More details on specific Creative Commons licenses are provided in the Attribution Quick Reference Guide.
There are a number of libraries, search engines, and search engine settings that allow you to easily search for copyleft-licensed works. Some popular examples include:
Wikimedia Commons (Links to an external site.)
Creative Commons Search (Links to an external site.)
Flickr Creative Commons (Links to an external site.)
Vimeo Creative Commons (Links to an external site.)
Creative Commons Music (Links to an external site.)
More examples may be found in the Open Content Providers (Links to an external site.) module
If a work (e.g., picture, song, video, lesson plan, rubric) does not have a statement of copyright status attached to it, you should generally assume that it is copyrighted and should seek permission before using it.
Open Content Providers
Open educational resources (OER) are made available from many different sources. This list, though not exhaustive, includes some of the more prominent providers. Explore these resources to find material that will be useful for you in your classroom, taking note of what licenses resources are released under.
Watch this video to learn how to use a search engine to find openly licensed content.
Open Textbooks & Curricula
Open Textbook Library – http://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/ (Links to an external site.)
CK-12 – http://www.ck12.org (Links to an external site.)
Saylor – http://saylor.org (Links to an external site.)
Boundless – http://boundless.com (Links to an external site.)
Connexions / OpenStax Library – http://cnx.org (Links to an external site.)
Textbook Equity – http://textbookequity.org/ (Links to an external site.)
BC Campus – http://open.bccampus.ca (Links to an external site.)
Wiki Books – http://en.wikibooks.org (Links to an external site.)
Odell Education – http://odelleducation.com/ (Links to an external site.)
Cool4Ed – http://www.cool4ed.org/ (Links to an external site.)
Merlot – http://www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm (Links to an external site.)
Search Engines
OER Commons – https://www.oercommons.org/ (Links to an external site.)
Creative Commons Search – http://search.creativecommons.org (Links to an external site.)
Google Advanced Search – https://www.google.com/advanced_search (Links to an external site.) *
Google Advanced Image Search – http://www.google.com/advanced_image_search (Links to an external site.) *
Yahoo Image Search – http://images.search.yahoo.com (Links to an external site.) **
* Be sure to set usage rights to “free to use share or modify”.
** Be sure to click the arrow in the top left and select “Labeled for Reuse” in the bottom left.
Text Content Providers
Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org (Links to an external site.) – open encyclopedia
Simple English Wikipedia – http://simple.wikipedia.org (Links to an external site.) – simplified encyclopedia
Project Gutenberg – http://www.gutenberg.org (Links to an external site.) – public domain texts
Wiki Source – http://en.wikisource.org (Links to an external site.) – source materials
Wiki Quote – http://en.wikiquote.org (Links to an external site.) – quotations
Media Content Providers
Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org (Links to an external site.) – open media
Digital Public Library of America – http://dp.la/ (Links to an external site.) – public domain works
LibriVox – http://librivox.org (Links to an external site.) – public domain audio books
Photo Pin – http://photopin.com (Links to an external site.) – open photos from Flickr
Internet Archive – https://archive.org (Links to an external site.) – public domain works
U.S. Army – http://www.army.mil/media/ (Links to an external site.) – public domain images
Flickr – http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/ (Links to an external site.) – creative commons images
Vimeo – http://vimeo.com/creativecommons (Links to an external site.) – creative commons videos
Creative Commons Music – https://creativecommons.org/legalmusicforvideos (Links to an external site.) – various creative commons music sites
Jamendo – http://jamendo.com (Links to an external site.) – creative commons music
Animal Photos – http://animalphotos.info (Links to an external site.) – animal photos
Library of Congress – http://www.loc.gov/ (Links to an external site.) – public domain works
Internet Archive – https://archive.org (Links to an external site.) – public domain works
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Digital Library – http://digitalmedia.fws.gov/ (Links to an external site.) – public domain works (mostly)
Open Courses
Lumen Learning – https://courses.candelalearning.com/catalog/lumen (Links to an external site.)
Wikiversity – http://en.wikiversity.org (Links to an external site.)
Tools
These tools are not technically open educational resources, but they can be used to aide you in creating, remixing, and sharing open educational resources.
Google Drive – http://drive.google.com (Links to an external site.) – write and create collaboratively
Rewordify – http://rewordify.com (Links to an external site.) – simplify difficult texts
Text Compactor – http://textcompactor.com (Links to an external site.) – summarize texts
Simplish – http://www.simplish.org (Links to an external site.) – simplify and summarize texts
Open Text Summarizer – http://www.splitbrain.org/services/ots (Links to an external site.) – summarizes nonfiction texts
Attribution
When utilizing someone else’s work in your own, you should be sure to attribute the work. In education, we generally use formatting guidelines from the American Psychological Association (APA) (Links to an external site.), and you should cite works according to these guidelines if required for a research paper or publication. However, in most situations, a simpler citation that includes the work’s title, author, license, and url will be appropriate.
All work licensed under an open license will generally require you to properly attribute (cite) the resource in order to use it in your own work. Failure to properly cite one of these works if it is used in your own work is a violation of copyright.
At minimum, you should attribute such works with the following information:
Attribution Items
Title
What is the title of the work (e.g., name of article, picture, or song)?
Author
Who created the work?
Source
Where did you find the work (e.g., url)?
License
What license is the work shared under (e.g., CC BY)?
As possible, you should also cite these works in such a way that it is clear to which portions of content the attribution refers and so that the attribution is prominent. For instance, if you include a Creative Commons image in a book you are writing, the attribution should be included as a caption under the image. When such attribution is not possible, including attributions in a works cited page is acceptable if it is clear to which content each reference belongs (e.g., providing page numbers).
Common Questions
If there is no author mentioned, how do I cite the resource?
Use the author of the website. If the website does not have a mentioned author, use the name of the website (e.g., “CK-12”).
What if there is no copyleft license or notice of public domain mentioned?
Remember, just because no copyright symbol is present does not mean that the work is open (e.g., not every page of a Harry Potter book has a copyright symbol on it, but it is still copyrighted). Since everything is automatically copyrighted, you should generally assume that all work is copyrighted and should not treat it as an open resource without further investigation.
May I use a copyrighted work if I properly cite the author?
This depends on what you are using it for (see the discussion of fair use), but generally, you must have written permission to use it in any significant way.
If something is marked as released under Creative Commons, but there is no specific license identified, which should I use?
You should probably either use the most restrictive license (CC BY-NC-ND) or the most common license (CC BY). Use your best judgment.
Can I modify or revise an openly licensed work?
This depends on the license. In most cases, yes, but you may need to release your new work under the same license. The primary times when you cannot do this would be when the license prohibits derivative works (e.g., any CC BY-ND and CC BY-NC-ND).
Can I use Royalty Free work?
This is tricky. Royalty Free (Links to an external site.) does not generally mean free as in libre (i.e. free to use for whatever). Rather, it typically means that you can use a work in a very specific way (e.g., print an image up to ten times) that will vary based upon the provider. So, royalty free is essentially just another way of saying copyrighted, but the material might be able to be used in some very limited manner without paying a fee.
If something is copyrighted, does that mean I cannot ever use it?
You can use it if you have the copyright holder’s permission. You can always contact the owner and ask her/him if you can use it. Open resources are handy, simply because they make it easier for you to use materials without asking permission every time you want to use something.
Citation Generator
If your citation needs to be in APA format, you may use this citation generator to help you.
Citation Generator (Links to an external site.)
Sharing Your Work
As the author of a creative work, you can release your it under an open license or into the public domain. All you need to do is place the Creative Commons license on your work or state that the work is in the public domain, and this allows others to know how they can use it. For example, by simply placing “CC BY 3.0” below a picture, you give anyone the right to use it for any purpose as long as they attribute you as the author.
Public Domain or an Open License?
As the author of a creative work, you should consider the benefits of different ways of sharing your content. In short, if you don’t care how it’s used but just want others to be free to use it, release it into the public domain. If you want to receive credit (be cited) when others use it, use CC BY 3.0.
For a more detailed walkthrough of how you should release your content, follow the steps provided in the table below.
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Step |
Question |
Yes |
No |
|
1 |
Do you want to allow anyone anywhere to use the work however they want without giving you credit? |
Public Domain |
Go to Step 2 |
|
2 |
Do you want to make sure that anyone who uses your work also shares their work in the same way? |
Go to Step 3 |
Go to Step 4 |
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3 |
Do you want to prevent others from profiting from your work? |
CC BY-NC-SA |
CC BY-SA |
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4 |
Do you want to prevent people from changing your work? |
Go to Step 5 |
CC BY |
|
5 |
Do you want to prevent others from profiting from your work? |
CC BY-NC-ND |
CC BY-ND |
More details about the Creative Commons licenses may be found on the Creative Commons website.
Example Statements
Releasing your work under an open license is easy. Just place a statement somewhere on your work that states what license you are releasing it under. The Creative Commons site provides a wizard to create a statement and image for you, or here are a few more examples:
This work is released under a CC BY 3.0 open license by [Your Name Here].
This work is released into the public domain.
Conclusion
This chapter has provided an overview on copyright, public domain, fair use, and open licenses. With this knowledge, teachers should feel sufficiently knowledgeable to use copyright-restricted resources in a legal manner. They should also be able to find and use public domain and openly licensed resources, to properly cite them, and to release their own creations openly.
