Public Domain Profits
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Public Domain Profits
By Stephen Bucaro
Copyright law goes back to the founding fathers who, in order
"to promote the progress of science and useful arts" in Article
I, Section 8 of the Constitution, secured for authors, artists
and inventors the exclusive right to their work for 28 years. In
1909, the Copyright Act allowed that after 28 years, protection
could be renewed for another 28 years. In 1978, the law was
revised to provide protection until 50 years after the creater's
death. The 1978 law also extended previous unexpired copyrights
for another 47 years.
To put it in simple terms, anything created before 1923 is now
in the public domain. Anything created between 1924 and 1963 is
in the public domain unless the copyright was renewed. Most of
the time these copyrights were not renewed because either the
owners weren't making any money off the work, or they just
forgot the deadline.
Have you noticed a lot of TV commercials using rock music
written in the early 60's. Why be creative when you can steal
somebody elses work who didn't renew the copyright?
Another question - can we profit from material in the public
domain? Yes, but you may need to be a little creative to do so.
And guess what? Once you modify something in the public domain,
you automatically have a copyright on the modified version -
until 50 years after your death! Unless you're a corporation,
then it's 100 years!
And some of that public domain material is high quality - from
authors like Shakespeare, Poe, Dante, as well as well-loved
favorites like the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle, the Tarzan and Mars books of Edgar Rice Burroughs,
Alice's adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, and thousands
of others.
Add to this the fact that you can use anything created by the
Federal Government or its employees in the course of their
duties. You paid for it with your taxes. This gives you access
to millions of great photographs, including those taken by NASA.
You can get these public domain materials TOTALLY FREE and keep
all the money when you sell them. Let me give you a few profit
ideas to get your creativity started.
1. Update an old classic story with new artwork. 2. Take an old
classic story and write a variation. 3. Make an old classic into
a simulated antique book. 4. Turn an old classic into something
else, like a game. 5. Make an old classic or government photo
based theme product, for example, a time management notebook. 6.
Make an electronic or audio version of an old classic. 7. Turn
an old classic into an educational item. 8. Make public domain
photographs into a calendar, poster, or screen saver. 9. Gather
a library or collection of public domain materials to sell to
publishers.
I'm sure you can think of many other creative ideas. Any one of
these ideas can be the basis for a Web business.
Where can you find public domain material? You can go to a good
search engine and search with the terms "public domain" or
"government". Let me give you a few excellent sources of public
domain materials to get you started.
- The Gutenberg Project (www.gutenberg.org) is an archive of
over 3000 public domain books in plain text format available for
free download.
- NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (www.jpl.nasa.gov)
- US Army Corps of Engineers (www.usace.army.mil) Over 5,900
images cleared available for public release and are free for
use. 700 under keyword "scenic".
- National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (www.noaa.org)
- NASA (http://visibleearth.nasa.gov)
- Library of Congress - Prints & Photographs Online catalog
(www.loc.gov) Not all loc images are in the public domain. If
the image is not in the public domain, only a thumbnail image is
displayed.
- Images in the Public Domain (www.sru.edu/depts/cisba/
compsci/dailey/public/public_domain.htm)
- A directory of Public Domain sites
(http://homepage.mac.com/krohrer/iad/links/clipart.html)
If you want to start a business, why get involved in an MLM
pyramid recruiting scam when the work of the best writers,
artists, and photographers in history is available to create
products for your own business for FREE?
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