Our markets, our democracy, our science, our traditions of free speech, and our art all depend more heavily on a Public Domain of freely available material than they do on the informational material that is covered by property rights. The Public Domain is not some gummy residue left behind when all the good stuff has been covered by property law. The Public Domain is the place we quarry the building blocks of our culture. It is, in fact, the majority of our culture.
- James Boyle, The Public Domain
 |
| Public Domain Day is celebrated on Jan 1st of each year. |
| However, because of the CTEA, there won't be any real |
| celebrations until 2019. |
Hiya, Kiddies! It's yer Ol' Professor here with a bit of a change of pace. Back when I first started this blog, the intent was not just to do reviews and commentaries about movies in the public domain, but also to provide information about just exactly what the public domain is, why it's important, how to take advantage of this incredible resource that is available to and owned by every one of us, and the threats, challenges and changes to both copyright and the public domain in this new digital age. So, in order to get back to that original purpose, this is the first in a series of posts I'm calling simply "Public Domain 101". Now for the most part I'm going to be talking about films here, since that's my own particular area of interest, but in general what I'll be saying will apply to any creative endeavor, whether it's a film, a book, a piece of music, a work of art, or even this blog post itself.
