DIY: a public domain Christmas

Thomas Nast’s most famous drawing, “Merry Old Santa Claus”,
from the January 1, 1881 edition of Harper’s Weekly. Public Domain Review

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The simple act of sharing a digital book can become complicated in this patent- and copyright-bound age. If a book, story, poem, or film is public domain, you can use and/or alter the material in any way you chose. This is especially helpful if you create websites, digital art, or publish videos. Keep in mind there's a strong line between offering what you create for personal use and monetizing it. Also, if your creation uses elements of another artist's/entity's creation or alters it, the original artist has a right to say how his/her creation is used. Shepard Fairey got in trouble for his use of Mannie Garcia's photo for his Barack Obama Hope poster. Using public domain pieces just works better.

To get started with finding public domain information, take a look at How to Celebrate a Public Domain Christmas at wikiHow. While the article goes a little overboard--you can use any image you want in your own home--it gives some ideas on finding pieces that are in the public domain. But do take care when you make something available to the general public.

For a list of free Christmas plays and stories, there's 10 classic Christmas stories, free to download. A helpful feature of this article is the reference to Project Gutenberg. Something I just learned: "Project Gutenberg is facilitating online publishing by contemporary authors." I also learned that there's a site called WikiLeaks: "WikiLeaks is a not-for-profit media organisation. Our goal is to bring important news and information to the public. We provide an innovative, secure and anonymous way for sources to leak information to our journalists..."

An interesting site that offers pieces in the public domain is The Public Domain Review. In the Collections section many sources are named and content made available. Some of the pieces are the digitized form of documents and works of art that are centuries old. Careful, some of the images can be disturbing. You can select what to view by medium or era.

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Ellis Island immigrants, Dutch children, Public Domain Review

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Finding background music for videos can be time-consuming. Google's Audio Library offers a very nice selection with descriptions including the genre and mood. Also included are precise notes on fair use/rights. You can find this library by logging into your YouTube account and choosing "My Channel" in the upper left menu. Then choose "Video Manager" from the bar above your YouTube banner. Along the left side of the page is a list with "Create" at the bottom. The Create dropdown includes "Audio Library" and "Video Editor." Once on the Audio Library page there are several options to filter its contents. You can download the audio sample selected.


--Marge

Wikimedia Commons: an artist's resource

Licensing: I, the copyright holder of this work, release this work into the public domain. This applies worldwide.

When you want to use someone else's photo or photographic image in your latest creation, it's not safe to use just any old picture you find in a Google search.  This is especially true if you want to sell what you're creating.  By using any image you find, you may be treading on someone's copyright toes.

As lovely as they are, Flickr images, and images posted to other user galleries, can be just as tricky.  Most users aren't that interested in (but they will be if your work goes viral) or knowledgeable about what rights to grant, if any.  If  you've found the absolutely perfect picture to mix into your work, best to contact the user who posted it and ask permission.  Tell her/him what you're working on and how you will use the picture.  And save a copy of the email granting permission to use it.

It's much safer to use Wikimedia Commons where only free, non-commercial content is allowed.  The terms of Fair use are clearly defined and allow commercial use in derivative works; take a look at this page for detailed information: Commons:Reusing content outside Wikimedia.  

On the page cited above is the following information, which most applies to an artist's wanting to use someone else's photo for derivative work:

CC-BY

In the Creative Commons Attribution license (CC-BY), re-users are free to make derivative works and copy, distribute, display, and perform the work, even commercially.
You must attribute the work to the author(s), and when re-using the work or distributing it, you must mention the license terms or a link to them. You may choose whether to make future modified versions available under CC-BY.

• CC-BY-3.0 page on Creative Commons
• Full legal text of this license

CC-SA

In the Creative Commons ShareAlike license (CC-SA), re-users are free to make derivative works and copy, distribute, display, and perform the work, even commercially.
When re-using the work or distributing it, you must mention the license terms or a link to them. You must make your version available under CC-SA.

CC-BY-SA

In the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license (CC-BY-SA), re-users are free to make derivative works and copy, distribute, display, and perform the work, even commercially.
When re-using the work or distributing it, you must attribute the work to the author(s) and you must mention the license terms or a link to them. You must make your version available under CC-BY-SA.

There is also public domain, which one would think is open for any use.  But every country has its own rules.  Here's what Wikimedia says about public domain:

Content marked as public domain (or local equivalent, e.g. "may be used for any purpose") is material believed to be out of copyright, either because of expiration of the original copyright, or because the material has been explicitly released into the public domain by its creator(s).
Note that inalienable moral rights and other restrictions may still apply in some countries for some uses.
It is common for publishers to take public domain works and republish them under their own copyright. This may be legal, but it does not affect the public domain status of the original image. If you tag the image with its origin (where you got it and where it came from originally) and the name of the creator, this can help us if a dispute with such a publisher arises later

Following a search on Wikimedia Commons for "green man" I selected the 2 images on this page (one is at the top).

Russel Wills [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

-- Marge