Thursday, March 16, 2006

Tales of the Public Domain


Did you know that there are boatloads of great ideas out there in the public domain just waiting to be take advantage of?
It's an endless and fascinating frontier.

For those of you not in the know, the public domain is generally defined as " the body of knowledge and innovation (especially creative works such as writing, art, music, and inventions) in relation to which no person or other legal entity can establish or maintain proprietary interests. This body of information and creativity is considered to be part of the common cultural and intellectual heritage of humanity, which in general anyone may use or exploit."*

It mostly applies to a lot of older material created by people who have long since shrugged off this mortal coil. What this means is that if you wanted, you could make a movie called "Hamlet, Dracula & Frankenstein vs Moby Dick", and no one could do a dammed thing about it.

Except me, because that's my idea and I'll sue you if you steal it.

* a big ups to wikipedia.org