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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