By Donna Knight

You may not know this but Walt Disney ripped off many of the Hans Christian Anderson and Grimm Brothers’ fairy tales. He never paid one red cent of royalty fees to the authors. They may be dead, but shouldn’t Disney at least have paid their families, especially considering how many billions of dollars the company has made off this “stolen” material? So why, you may ask, hasn’t Disney gotten sued for intellectual property theft?

The answer is simple. Walt Disney was a marketing genius who knew he could not be sued for using this material. The reason he couldn’t be sued is because this material is in the public domain. What does public domain mean? It means the copyright has expired. The benefit of public domain is that it can be used by anyone in any way without paying royalty fees or even giving credit to the original author. You can make copies of it, give it away or sell it and keep all the profits.

The beauty of public domain is that anyone can take advantage of it if you know how. Public domain information is accessible to anyone with access to the internet and at the library. You don’t even have to be as creative as Walt Disney. You just have to add your own flavor to it.

What is Public domain?

The definition of public domain is any body of creative work or knowledge that is not protected by US copyright laws. Copyright protection should always be verified but basically all works created prior to 1923 in the U.S. are in the public domain in the United States. That’s not all. The law also includes works done prior to 1978, for which life of the author plus 70 years doesn’t exceed the current year. There are additional terms under which works have fallen out of copyright but the rules are more complex.

The term “body of creative works and other knowledge” includes literary works, music, movies, art work, scientific ideas, and inventions, just to name a few. So, quite literally, public domain information is a vast ocean of works available for anyone to dive into. The best part is use of these works is free. Everything you earn from them is 100% profit.

Walt Disney used public domain information by updating old classics and making movies out of them. In order to profit from public domain, it is important to keep in mind you must have an audience for it. That is not a problem since there are public domain works of all categories, including recipes, marketing, business, arts and crafts, children’s books, educational books, and many more. There’s no limit to the subject matters you can find public domain works in.

How much will this cost you?

You can find a huge amount of public domain information on websites for free. One of the largest resources is http://www.gutenberg.org. It is free to access and download any of the material there. Most works there are public domain. The listing information tells you if the work is still copyrighted, the author and the format.

What can you do with public domain works?

Just as there is no limit to the types of public domain works available, there is no limit to the
number of ways you can use this material. Here are some of the ways you can use public domain information to profit:

1. Republish old literary works as e-books. The classics you see in bookstores are prime examples of making money from public domain information. The publishers did not have to buy the rights for the books they distribute. You can do the same with e-books. You can find old literary works either on public domain web sites or even search your local library for old works, and scan them. Convert the images to text with a text OCR (optical character recognition) program, edit errors, package it nicely in .pdf format, and you’re all set to market a royalty-free product!
2. Republish old articles as special reports. Granted you’re not going to find any internet marketing or internet-related articles circa 1923, but there are still many interesting pieces from that era. In a recent case study, a man made 43 sales for a special report he made out of a 1914 article on dog grooming.
3. Make downloadable albums of old songs. Here’s your chance to make MP3 downloads that are completely legal. Keep in mind, however, only the songs are public domain. The performances of certain versions (i.e. the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s version of a Beethoven classic) have their own copyrights. If you are a musician, you can create your own version and sell it as relaxation music, dance music or music for various purposes. It would be best to make your own version from the public domain compositions.
4. Offer downloadable movies. Just like Walt Disney, Ted Turner has made a killing with public domain movies. One of his channels, Turner Classics, shows pre-1923 movies which he can rebroadcast without paying any royalties. You could do the same by offering old movies for download.
5. Make posters of timeless masterpieces. You could also search the web for high quality images of classic paintings and sketches. These digitized masterpieces can easily be reproduced as posters which you could sell to the millions of art aficionados worldwide.
6. Publish it in book format through a self-publishing company. Sell it online or offline. Self-publishing companies such as Lulu.com make it easy to publish a print book without a big budget.
7. Print it out yourself and sell copies offline or online. You can buy supplies, such as binders, for printing books at office supply stores. For the most professional highest quality print, use a laser printer. At this point in time, color laser printers are now affordable so you could even print in color with a laser printer if you have a bigger budget.
8. Take an educational work, such as one about playing tennis, and make a video series about it.
9. Create an mp3 audio class out of a public domain work. Let people download it from your website or put it on CD and sell it offline.
10. Create a collection of works from multiple sources. For example, make a compilation of children’s stories from various books that are full of stories.

Public domain works can’t be copyrighted, but if you make changes, your changes are copyrightable. This is the smart thing to do to make sure no one steals your hard work and makes money off it.

Millions of dollars have been made by those who took advantage of public domain information. There’s no limit to what you can do. If you have a computer and a printer, you already have the tools you need to make money with public domain. Now that you have some ideas about what to do, there’s nothing stopping you.

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Donna Knight is a Computer Trainer and Website Promotion Specialist. She has built over 200 websites and helps new site owners promote their site cheaply. For more tips on how to make money at no or low cost, visit her Internet Marketing Tools and Reviews blog at http://www.DonnaKnight.com
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Copyright (C) 2005 Donna Knight. All Rights Reserved. Permission granted to post this article in newsletters, free ebooks or websites as long as the article and resource box remain intact.