So You Want to Use the Public Domain…
So you want to make a mashup of something, but you aren’t sure what to use because you don’t want to have to pay millions of dollars to use certain material. What do you do? Use the public domain! Many people these days forget that there are works in the public domain ready and able to be used – without any worry of copyright drama! Of course, most things in the public domain are not exactly “modern” in our terms (unless you have some weird syndrome where you think the early 20th century is “modern”) but these works can still be taken and turned into something fresh and modern for all of us to enjoy.
One such example is the LOLCat Bible. I would hope you have at least heard of LOLCats and the Bible, so you can probably tell where this is going. LOLCats have their own… unique… language, which has become increasingly popular in recent years, so someone decided to translate the Bible into this LOLCat language. If you are familiar with LOLCats, you probably know how ridiculous and hilarious this idea probably is. This is just one instance of using something in the public domain for more modern audiences. Instead of reading the Bible in Old English language, you can try to decipher the erroneous grammar of LOLCats and probably get a good laugh in the process.
A classic favorite of mine in the public domain is this lovely video titled “Duck and Cover.” It’s quite cheesy, but given the time period, that is not much of a surprise.
It was made to educate children during the World War II era about how to prepare for the blast of a nuclear bomb. Knowing what we know now about the effects of a nuclear bomb makes this video especially entertaining because there is pretty much no chance of surviving such a nuclear blast. The first time I viewed this video was in my 8th grade U.S. History class and it instantly became an inside joke among the students in our grade. Our teacher would yell “FLASH!” and flicker the lights, which was our signal to assume the position for shielding against the “nuclear blast.” The twist was that he would do this randomly throughout the school year, and it even began to infiltrate our other classes. As a result, we took the idea of “Duck and Cover” and remixed it into our own little game. It would be interesting to see what other ideas people could conceive using this concept as well.
The public domain is a great resource for finding old works, and there are plenty of resources online to find whatever you may need. Here are 5 tips from the article I read on how to find and use things from the public domain:
1. Archive.org and Project Gutenberg are arguably the best known resources for public domain films and books. Both websites allows you to view or download public domain works in a variety of formats. Mashable has a great list of resources here that you can use to find public domain work as well.
2. If you’re going to post public domain material, add a comment in the footer of your blog that says the works posted are public domain, but should they not be for any reason, you will remove it. This will help keep you out of trouble if any item moves out of the public domain in the future.
3. Just because something is public domain, it doesn’t mean that related works are also necessarily public domain. The old Fleischer Superman cartoons from the 40s are public domain, for example, but that doesn’t mean all of Superman is in public domain as well. So make sure to double check what elements of a public domain work can be used. The Wikipedia page for each item usually indicates its legal status.
4. If you modify a public domain work, you own the copyright to the modified work. The best example of this is Thor. Thor is public domain, but Marvel owns the copyright to their version of Thor, so your Thor can’t speak Old English and smack around Dr. Doom.
5. There are other free, but non-public domain resources that you can utilize in your mashups (such as Creative Commons-licensed Flickr photos), but always make sure you are crediting them properly!
-Kianna
Mash-Up & Remix: The Hottest F-Sem at M-Wash 
Though the public domain provides remix-ers and mash-up artists with the copyright freedom that they crave and desire, the works that are provided are often not suitable. Culture changes often and rapidly throughout the years, and the fact that works in the public domain have to be at least 13 years old for use makes them culturally obsolete. Im not saying that all of the material in the public domain is trash, for example “duck and cover” is fantastic, just most of the material is outdated. The public domain and copyright laws need to be updated and changed.
I agree, the time it takes for anyone to use copyright material is way too long. If we are going to be able to contain remixing culture we need access to these recent ideas.
-Andrew Hogan
That video was from a really long time ago! (re-stating the obvious) I think that it definitely shows how ridiculously long it takes for different works to be placed in the public domain. That video, while mildly entertaining, has no applicable use today, and really it is far too old to even be remixed into something that most people would be interested in. There needs to be change in how long it should take for a work to be put into the public domain.
Ditto to what my peers have already stated. The time for material to enter the Public Domain is far to long. Most works will have become stale, or lost their point by the time they can be used. Take “Duck and Cover” for example; it was meant to help protect children from burning to death as children often will after a nuke is dropped in their general vicinity. However, today, we find this situation funny. It could be the stereotypical 40’s cartoons, or simply the fact that kids at the time were taught that hiding under their desks during a nuclear holocaust would protect them. The Great thing about modern times is the ability to change anything. Example: I think that a voice over, done in the style of the Billy Mays'(RIP)/ShamWow dubs, would be quite hilarious.