Public domain riches for international publishers

When looking for content to use for your site or blog, one of the sources that every AdSense book or e-book (including mine!) mentions is public domain documents. The term “public domain” (short for “in the public domain”) refers to documents and other publications that were never copyrighted, or whose copyright protection has lapsed, or whose authors/creators have voluntarily surrendered all copyright claims. Public domain documents can be used for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, without having to pay anyone any licensing rights. This is why they're so appealing. See the Wikipedia entry for public domain for more detailed information.

Generally speaking, anything published before 1923 is in the public domain. After that date, it gets pretty murky and careful research is required to determine if a document is in the public domain or not. Things like when it was published, whether copyright protection was explicitly sought (these days you don't have to do anything — copyright protection is implicit and automatic — but there were notice and registration requirements in the past), whether the copyright was renewed or not, etc. See Project Gutenberg's Copyright HOWTO for rules on determining if a document published in the United States is in the public domain or not — you'll see it's rather complicated. The rules vary by country, of course — see Project Gutenberg's Australian rules for an example.

The loss of copyright protection is irrevocable, but some documents that you may think are in the public domain may reacquire copyright protection for other reasons. A document based on public domain material may have copyright protection, for example, if someone adds to or alters the public domain material in a significant manner, such as by translating the material into another language. Which brings us to today's topic.

One of the problems with public domain material is that it is for the most part old stuff with little commercial value. There are some interesting documents like Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich, but if your primary topic is very modern, there's probably little in the public domain that will help. Or is there?

One of the unusual aspects about United States copyright law is that the works of the United States federal government (not state or local governments) are explicitly NOT protected by copyright. Here's the relevant extract from the copyright act:

Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government, but the United States Government is not precluded from receiving and holding copyrights transferred to it by assignment, bequest, or otherwise.

According to this, then, anything created by an employee of the United States government in the course of that employee's normal duties is not covered by coypright. Note, however, that this doesn't necessarily apply to works created by contractors working on behalf of the government or works that the government purchases or licenses from others. So again, you have to be careful and do your research.

Many times, though, the government explicitly notes which documents its publishers are in the public domain. For example, take a look at the PDF document Chronic Disease Notes & Reports, published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On the last page of the document you'll find this statement:

Chronic Disease Notes & Reports is published by the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia. The contents are in the public domain. [emphasis added]

Bingo! Immediately we know we can use the information in this document without fear of violating someone's copyright.

Now just republishing public domain US government documents probably won't do you a lot of good due to duplicate content filters in the search engines and the fact that the government sites on which these documents are found are considered authoritative and will easily outrank any sites you create based solely on those documents. The key, of course, is to add value to those documents. Such as by translating them into a different language.

Think about it: if you're an international publisher whose native language is not English, the public domain works of the United States government are fertile grounds for content development. The US government produces all kinds of interesting documents on almost any topic imaginable. Your own government probably has similar documents, but they're almost always subject to copyright. But there's nothing stopping you from translating the US government's documents and using that translation as content. You can provide great value just by doing the translation. (You might want to check first to see if the US government hasn't already done a translation — many documents are available in Spanish, for example.)

English-language publishers can also use these public domain documents, but must add value in different ways: rewording/rewriting the document; writing analyses/summaries/commentaries; linking related material together; etc. etc.

Or you can just use the public domain document as a basis for writing your own information about the topic.

You can definitely make money with public domain material, but it generally takes some work to make a lot of money with it.

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Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. You can read this blog by mail if it's more convenient for you, just send a blank email to memwg-blog@aweber.com to subscribe.

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