A public domain book is a book with no copyright or a book where that where created without a license or also books where its copyrights expired,[20] or have been forfeited.[21]Every book and tale written prior to 1787 is under public domain (or in most of the countries 1945) is on public domain, among them, every book written by Jane Austen, Lewis Carroll, Edgar Allan Poe and H. G. Wells.

• Arthur Mervyn, Edgar Huntly, Wieland and Sky-Walk by Charles Brockden Brown
• Camilla, Evelina and Cecilia by Frances Burney
• Jonathan Dickinson's Journal by Jonathan Dickinson.
• Notes on the State of Virginia by Thomas Jefferson
• The Algerine Captive by Royall Tyler
• The Boarding School; or, Lessons of a Preceptress to Her Pupils and The Coquette by Hannah Webster Foster
• The Power of Sympathy by William Hill Brown
• The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding
• The Romance of the Forest by Ann Radcliffe
• The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The Hunting of the Snark and Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll
• Emma, Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
• Jane Eyre, Shirley, Villette and The Professor by Charlotte Brontë
• The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, and The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells
• "Fragment of a Novel" by Lord Byron
• Tales of My Landlord and Waverley Novels by Walter Scott
• "The Vampyre" by John William Polidori
• Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, The Last Man and Mathilda by Mary Shelley
• "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", by Edgar Allan Poe
• The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne;
• David Copperfield, Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol and A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens;
• Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
• Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe;
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
• The Last Days of Pompeii by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
• The Odd Women by George Gissing
• The Autobiography of a Flea by Edward Avery
• The Prisoner of Zenda and Rupert of Hentzau by Anthony Hope
• Vanity Fair, The Newcomes and The Book of Snobs by William Makepeace Thackeray.

• Mrs Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf
• The Rainbow, Women in Love, The Lost Girl and Aaron's Rod by D. H. Lawrence
• Many Marriages, by Sherwood Anderson
• The Moon Pool, by A. Merritt
• Ulysses, by James Joyce
• Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition

These books are commonly found online on websites like internet archive or wikisource in diverse formats like .PDF, .Doc. These books and can be converted from .txt, .doc or .pdf formats to EPUB format (ebook reader format) by a click with Calibre (free software). Everybody can download, copy, edit and read in a digital way on ebook readers, computers, or printed freely and without restrictions. They are commonly found online, on libraries, in diverse formats like .PDF, .Doc, and can be converted to EPUB by a click with Calibre and Sigil (both free software) so any one can be read in a digital way on ebook readers, computers, or printed freely.

Music has been created and played by humans for millennia. An object identified as a possible flute (the Divje Babe Flute) is more than 40,000 years old. Even if humans had musical instruments and made music there was a need for a musical notation system to be able to preserve song through writing. The first such system, the Music of Mesopotamia notation system, was created 4000 years ago. In the X century Guido of Arezzo introduced Latin musical notations.[citation needed] All this laid the foundation for the preservation of global music belonging to the public domain since the beginning of musical history to the present.

Musopen project has been dedicated to record this music whose records are in the public domain using musical instruments and equipment sound capture for not only musical writings are available to the general public but also can the music itself in an audibly way high quality formats lossless formats like Flac that gives the highest possible quality, and also in a low quality format or with lost as .ogg files (that were very useful during the early years of Internet and the first generations of portable media player). Archive.com preserve this entire collection of classical music recorded by the Museopen project, every song can be freely downloaded and distributed. An example of this music Coriolanus Overture of Ludwig van Beethoven recorded by the project Musopen stored in Flac format:

Rock, Rock, Rock

A public domain film is a film that was released to public domain by its author or because its copyright has expired. In 2016 there are more than 2000 films on public domain in every genre, from musicals to romance, horror to animated movies and noir to western movies.

Pamela Samuelson has identified eight "values" that can arise from information and works in the public domain.[22]:22

Possible values include:

1. Building blocks for the creation of new knowledge, examples include data, facts, ideas, theories, and scientific principle.
2. Access to cultural heritage through information resources such as ancient Greek texts and Mozart’s symphonies.
3. Promoting education, through the spread of information, ideas, and scientific principles.
4. Enabling follow-on innovation, through for example expired patents and copyright.
5. Enabling low cost access to information without the need to locate the owner or negotiate rights clearance and pay royalties, through for example expired copyrighted works or patents, and non-original data compilation.[23]
6. Promoting public health and safety, through information and scientific principles.
7. Promoting the democratic process and values, through news, laws, regulation, and judicial opinion.
8. Enabling competitive imitation, through for example expired patents and copyright, or publicly disclosed technologies that do not qualify for patent protection.[22]:22

L.H.O.O.Q. (1919). Derivative work by theDadaist Marcel Duchampbased on the Mona Lisa.

Derivative works include translations, musical arrangements, and dramatizations of a work, as well as other forms of transformation or adaptation.[24]Copyrighted works may not be used for derivative works without permission from the copyright owner,[25] while public domain works can be freely used for derivative works without permission.[26][27] Artworks that are public domain may also be reproduced photographically or artistically or used as the basis of new, interpretive works.[28] Works derived from public domain works can be copyrighted.[29]

Once works enter into the public domain, derivative works such as adaptations in book and film may increase noticeably, as happened with Frances Hodgson Burnett's novel The Secret Garden, which became public domain in 1987.[30] By 1999, the plays of Shakespeare, all public domain, had been used in more than 420 feature-length films.[31] In addition to straightforward adaptation, they have been used as the launching point for transformative retellings such as Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and Troma Entertainment's Tromeo and Juliet.[32][33][34]Marcel Duchamp's L.H.O.O.Q. is a derivative of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, one of thousands of derivative works based on the public domain painting.[26]

• Fashion design
  Fashion design is the art of application of design and aesthetics or natural beauty to clothing and accessories. Fashion design is influenced by cultural
  35 KB (3,901 words) - 04:52, 10 September 2016
• Fashion
  For other uses, see Fashion (disambiguation). "Menswear" redirects here. For the musical group, see Menswear (band). Fashion is a popular style or
  64 KB (8,870 words) - 16:23, 14 September 2016
• Domain Name System
  "DNS" redirects here. For other uses, see DNS (disambiguation). The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical decentralized naming system for computers
  51 KB (7,178 words) - 21:38, 31 August 2016
• Muff (handwarmer) (category Fashion accessories)
  A muff is a fashion accessory for outdoors usually made of a cylinder of fur or fabric with both ends open for keeping the hands warm. It was introduced
  2 KB (243 words) - 22:35, 2 May 2016
• Fashion in the Soviet Union
  general public did not have ready access to pre-made fashion. The New Economic Policy’s authorization of private business allowed Western fashion to enter
  12 KB (1,417 words) - 06:08, 28 August 2016
• Erotic photography (redirect from Public domain photography of female nudes)
  portable device made nude photography in secluded parks and other semi-publicplaces easier, and represented a great advance for amateur erotica. Artists
  21 KB (2,605 words) - 11:27, 4 September 2016
• Haute couture (redirect from House (fashion))
  dressmaking" or "high fashion") refers to the creation of exclusive custom-fitted clothing. Haute couture is high end fashion that is constructed by
  20 KB (2,184 words) - 14:20, 12 September 2016
• Evening gown (category 18th-century fashion)
  century with the rise of the Burgundian court and its fashionable and fashion-conscious ruler Philip the Good. Wool, in various weaves, was the most
  11 KB (1,622 words) - 18:43, 9 September 2016
• .design (category Generic top-level domains)
  top-level domain name. It was proposed in ICANN's new generic top-level domain(gTLD) program, and became available to the general public on May 12,
  4 KB (451 words) - 05:06, 26 February 2016
• Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition (redirect from Britannica Public Domain)
  scholars of the time. This edition of the encyclopedia is now in the public domain, but the outdated nature of some of its content makes its use as a source
  39 KB (2,451 words) - 15:35, 29 August 2016
• Protein domain
  I-band region of titin is assembled in a 'modular' fashion by weakly interacting Ig-likedomains". J Mol Biol. 255 (4): 604–616. doi:10.1006/jmbi.1996
  63 KB (7,831 words) - 09:11, 11 September 2016
• Venus Fashion
  Swimwear. In 1999, Venus acquired WinterSilks, a large importer of silk fashions. In 2000, reflecting the expanded offerings, the company name changed to
  4 KB (340 words) - 17:48, 20 July 2016
• Germany (section Fashion and design)
  This article may incorporate text from this source, which is in the public domain. "Topping the EU Fat Stats, Germany Plans Anti-Obesity Drive". Deutsche
  193 KB (18,399 words) - 17:51, 14 September 2016
• Generic top-level domain
  (IANA) for use in the Domain Name System of the Internet. A top-level domain is the last label of every fully qualified domain name. They are called generic
  26 KB (2,902 words) - 21:16, 11 September 2016
• Public art
  Public art is art in any media that has been planned and executed with the intention of being staged in the physical public domain, usually outside and
  50 KB (6,664 words) - 16:54, 18 August 2016
• Jerkin (garment) (category 16th-century fashion)
  UK.  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the publicdomain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "article name needed". Encyclopædia Britannica
  5 KB (663 words) - 10:08, 25 July 2016
• The New York Times (section Fashion news articles promoting advertisers)
  York Public Library Works by or about The New York Times at Internet Archive (archives) Works by The New York Times at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
  112 KB (12,785 words) - 17:59, 13 September 2016
• List of Internet top-level domains
  of Internet top-level domain extensions contains all top-level domains, which are those domains in the DNS root zone of the Domain Name System of the Internet
  169 KB (4,114 words) - 05:57, 14 September 2016
• Chaperone DnaJ (category Protein domains)
  isolated cysteine rich domain folds in zinc dependent fashion. Each set of two repeats binds one unit of zinc. Although this domain has been implicated in
  7 KB (826 words) - 21:48, 28 May 2016
• Time-domain reflectometer
  A time-domain reflectometer (TDR) is an electronic instrument that uses time-domainreflectometry to characterize and locate faults in metallic cables
  21 KB (2,998 words) - 13:03, 17 May 2016

In the 1950s to the 1990s software culture, as original academic phenomena, "public-domain" (usually abbreviated to "PD") software was popular. This kind of freely distributed and shared "free software" combined the nowadays differentiated software classes of freeware, shareware and free and open-source software and was created in academia, and by hobbyists and hackers.[2] As software was often written in an interpreted language such as BASIC, the source code was needed and therefore distributed to run the software. PD software was also shared and distributed as printed source code (type-in program) in computer magazines (like Creative Computing, SoftSide, Compute!, Byte etc.) and books, like the bestseller BASIC Computer Games.[3] Early on, closed-source software was uncommon until the mid-1970s to the 1980s.[citation needed]

Before 1974, when the US Commission on New Technological Uses of Copyrighted Works (CONTU) decided that "computer programs, to the extent that they embody an author's original creation, are proper subject matter of copyright",[4] software was not copyrightable and therefore always in public domain. This legislation, plus court decisions such as Apple v. Franklin in 1983 for object code, clarified that the Copyright Act gave computer programs the copyright status of literary works.

In the 1980s, a common way to share public-domain software[verification needed] was by receiving them through a local user group or a company like PC-SIG, of Sunnyvale, California, who maintained a mail-order catalog of more than 300 disks with an average price of US$6.[5] Public-domain software with source code was also shared on BBSnetworks. Public-domain software was commercialized sometimes by a donationware model, asking the users for a money donation to be sent by mail.[6]

The public-domain "free sharing" and "donationware" commercialization models evolved in following years to the (non-voluntary) shareware model,[7][8] and software free of charge, called freeware.[9] Additionally, due to other changes in the computer industry, the sharing of source code became less usual.[10]

With the Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988 (and the earlier Copyright Act of 1976), the legal base for public-domain software changed drastically. Before the act, releasing a software without copyright notice was enough for dedicating to public domain. With the new copyright act, software was by default copyright-protected and needed an explicit waiver statement or license of the author.[11][12]

Reference implementations of algorithms, often cryptographic algorithms, meant or applied for standardization are still often given into the public domain, examples are CERN's httpd[13] in 1993 and Serpent cipher in 1999. The Openwall Project maintains a list of several algorithms and their source code in the public domain.[14]

As response in the end 1980s of the academic software ecosystem to the change in the copyright system, permissive license texts were developed, like the BSD license and derivatives. Permissive-licensed software, which is a kind of free and open-source software, shares most characteristics of the earlier public-domain software, but stands on the legal base of copyright law.

In 1980s Richard Stallman, who worked long in an academic environment of "public-domain"-like software sharing, noticed the emerge of proprietary software and the decline of the public-domain software ecosystem. As approach to preserve this ecosystem he created a software license, the GPL, which encodes the "public-domain" rights and enforces them irrevocable on software. Paradoxically, his copyleft approach relies on the enforceability of the copyright to be effective. Copyleft free software shares therefore many properties with public-domain software, but doesn't allow relicensing or sublicensing. Unlike real public-domain software or permissive-licensed software, Stallman's copyleft license tries to enforce the free shareability of software also for the future by not allowing license changes.

To refer to free software (which is under a free software license) or to software distributed and usable free of charge (freeware) as "public-domain" is therefore incorrect. While public domain gives up the author's exclusive rights (e.g. copyright), in free software the author's copyright is still retained and used, for instance to enforce copyleft or to hand out permissive-licensed software. Licensed software is in general not in the public domain.[15] Another distinct difference is that an executable program may be in the public domain even if its source code is not made available (making the program not feasibly modifiable), while free software has the source code always available.

With the 2000s and the emerge of peer-to-peer sharing networks and sharing in web development, a new copyright-critical developer generation made the "license-free" public-domain software model visible again, also criticizing the FOSS license ecosystem ("Post Open Source") as stabilizing part of the copyright system.[16][17][18][19] New non-FOSS licenses and waiver texts were developed, notable the Creative Commons "CC0" (2009) and the "unlicense" (2010), and a growing popularity of permissive software licenses was noticed. Also, the growing problem of orphaned software and digital obsolescence of software raised the awareness of the relevance of passing software into PD again for a better digital preservation of the digital heritage, unrestricted by copyright and DRM.[20][21][22][23]

Around 2004 there was a debate whether public-domain software can be considered part of the FOSS ecosystem, as lawyer Lawrence Rosen argued in the essay "Why the public domain isn't a license" that software could not truly be given into public domain,[24] a position that faced opposition by Daniel J. Bernstein and others.[25] In 2012, the status was finally resolved when Rosen changed his mind and accepted the CC0 as open-source license, while admitting that contrary to previous claims copyright can be waived away, backed by a Ninth circuit's decision.[26]

Before the Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988 (and the earlier Copyright Act of 1976, which went into effect in 1978) works could be easily given into the public domain by just releasing it without an explicit copyright notice. After that, all works were by default copyright-protected and needed to be actively given into public domain by a waiverstatement.[11][12]

Copyrighted works, like software, are meant to pass into public domain after the copyright term, losing their copyright privilege. Due to the decades-long copyright protection granted by the Berne Convention, no software has ever passed into public domain by leaving copyright terms. The question how fast works should pass into public domain has been a matter of scientific[27][28][29] and public debates, also for software like video games.[21][22][23]

WTFPL license logo, a public-domain-like license

CC0 license logo, a copyright waiver and public-domain-like license[30]

While real public domain makes software licenses unnecessary, as no owner/author is required to grant permission ("Permission culture"), there are licenses that grant public-domain-like rights. There is no universally agreed-upon license, but multiple licenses that aim to release source code into the public domain.

In 2000 the WTFPL was released as public-domain-like license/waiver/anti-copyright notice.[31] In 2009 the Creative commons released the CC0, which was created for compatibility with also law domains (e.g. Civil law of continental Europe) where dedicating into public domain is problematic. This is achieved by a public-domain waiver statement and a fall-back all-permissive license, for the case the waiver is not possible.[32][33] The Unlicense, published around 2010, has a focus on an anti-copyright message. The unlicense offers a public-domain waiver text with a fall-back public-domain-like license inspired by permissive licenses but without attribution clause.[34][35] In 2015 Github reported that of their approx. 5.1 million licensed projects hosted almost 2% use the unlicense, approx. 102,000 projects.[36]

See also Category:Public-domain software with source code, Category:Public-domain software

Public domain software in the early computer age was for instance shared as type-in program in computer magazines and books like BASIC Computer Games. Explicit PD waiver statements or license files were at that time unusual. Publicly available software without a copyright notice was assumed to be, and shared as, public-domain software.

Notable general PD software from that time include:

• ELIZA (1966)[37][38]
• SPICE (1973)[39]
• BLAS (1979)
• FFTPACK (1985)

Video games are among the earliest examples of shared PD software, which are still notable today:

• Spacewar! (1962)[40]
• Hamurabi (1969)
• Star Trek (text game) (1971)
• Hunt the Wumpus (1972)
• Maze War (1974)
• Colossal Cave Adventure (1976)
• Android Nim (1978)
• Rogue (video game) (1980)
• Ballerburg (1987)

Many PD software authors kept the practices of public-domain release without having a waiver text, not knowing or caring for the changed copyright law and creating therefore a legal problem. On the other hand, magazines started in the mid-1980s to claim copyright even for type-in programs that were seen as PD before.[41][42] Only slowly PD software authors started to include explicit relinquishment or license statement texts.

These examples of modern PD software (after the Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988) is either under proper public domain (e.g. created by an US governmental organization), under a proper public-domain-like license (for instance CC0) or accompanied by a clear waiver statement from the author. While not as widespread as in the pre-2000s, PD software still exists nowadays. For example, Sourceforge listed 334 hosted PD projects in 2016,[43] GitHub 102,000 PD projects under the unlicense alone in 2015.[36]In 2016 an analysis of the Fedora Project's packages revealed "public domain" as seventh most popular "license".[44]

The award-winning video game developer Jason Rohrer releases his works into the PD, as does Daniel J. Bernstein with his reference implementations of cryptographic algorithms.

• BLAST (1990)
• CERN's httpd (1993)[45]
• ImageJ (1997)[46]
• Serpent (cipher) (1999)[47]
• SQLite (2000)[48]
• reStructuredText (2002)[49]
• I2P (2003)
• 7-Zip's LZMA SDK (2008)[50]
• Diamond Trust of London (2012)
• Glitch (2013)[51][52]
• The Castle Doctrine (2014)
• SHA-3 (2015)[53]

• Public domain
• Public copyright license
• License-free software
• Free and open-source software