Monday, March 17, 2008

Copyright or Public Domain?

A few basics on what is in the public domain and what is copyright protected. For starters, this article is copyrighted because I'm writing it after 1989 - even though I haven't sent it to some government agency for protection. However, some things automatically in the public domain (which means they can be reused without the authors permission): Fact, ideas, recipes and formulas, dedicated works, government works and expired works.

Today the definition of expired works is the author's death date + 70 years. Publications prior to 1922 are in the public domain.

For more details about the copyright laws just do a google search on Hirtle, copyright.
To find out more about public domain, go to creative commons.org.
For free images, google; images.gov (all government generated images and publications are in the public domain so you can use them, as I understand the laws.

Note: I'm not a lawyer but I did get this information from a lawyer and I'm sharing the information freely! Madlyn

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