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For all practical purposes on Wikipedia, the public domain comprises copyright-free works: anyone can use them in any way and for any purpose. Proper attribution to the author or source of a work, even if it is in the public domain, is still required in order to comply with relevant policies.[1]
The public domain is generally defined (e.g. by the US Copyright Office) as the sum of works that are not copyrighted, i.e.
- that were not eligible for copyright in the first place, or
- whose copyright has expired, or
- that were released into the public domain by the copyright holder.
However, there is no such thing as the public domain on the Internet. International treaties, like the Berne Convention, are not self-executing and do not supersede local law. There is no globally valid "International Copyright Law" that would take precedence over local laws. Instead, signatory countries of the Berne Convention have adapted their laws to comply with the minimum standards set forth by the treaty, often with stronger provisions than required. Whether or not something is copyright-free in some country depends on the individual country.
The Wikimedia Foundation, the legal body responsible for Wikipedia, is based in the US state of California. Although legislation is sometimes unclear about which laws are to apply on the Internet, the primary law relevant for Wikipedia is that of the United States. For re-users of Wikipedia content, it is the laws of their respective countries.
In the US, any work published before January 1, 1929, anywhere in the world[2] is in the public domain. Other countries are not bound by that 1929 date, though.[3] Complications arise when special cases are considered, such as trying to determine whether a work published later might be in the public domain in the US, or when dealing with unpublished works. When a work has not been published in the US, but in some other country, that other country's copyright laws also must be taken into account. Re-users of Wikipedia content also might find the explanations here useful.
- ^ This is required for Wikipedia to be a reliable encyclopedia, even if it is written by non-experts.
- ^ Strictly speaking, only US works published before January 1, 1929, and foreign works published in compliance with US formalities (registration, © notice) before that date are in the public domain in the US. For non-US works published without compliance with US formalities (i.e., without © notice), the situation is a bit more complicated:
- If published before 1909, such works are in the public domain in the US.
- If published between 1909 and 1928 (inclusive) in a language other than English, the Ninth Circuit has considered them as "unpublished works" according to Peter Hirtle Archived 2017-08-25 at the Wayback Machine and following the decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in the case Twin Books v. Disney Archived 2009-06-19 at the Wayback Machine in 1996. The case was about the book Bambi, A Life in the Woods; the decision is heavily criticized in Nimmer on Copyright (ISBN 0-820-51465-9), the standard commentary on US copyright law.
- If published between 1909 and 1928 (inclusive) in English, they are highly likely to be PD, given that the aforementioned controversial case was only about a work published in a foreign language.
- Additionally, any work first published outside of the United States without copyright notice before 1989, when the US joined the Berne Convention, is in the public domain in the US if it was in the public domain in its country of origin on the URAA date (in most cases January 1, 1996). See the section on country-specific rules for more information.
- ^ Most countries have had similar copyright extensions in the past, the date ranges from the 1850s to 1930s in said countries.