Anyone Else Rely Heavily On Public Domain Resource

Design Resources
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I’m a big fan of using resources I don’t see used often by others. It started when I just wanted some copyright free psychedelic backgrounds. I discovered Fractal Generators (and actually wound up as a founding member of Fractal Forums (the original .com - Not the new .org) (although I did help them with the transition when it changed hands) (,com is still there as an archive) (I used my Naughty Adult Content name there - Sockratease - because I was using them for my then-fiance’s site).

Fractals are beautiful and nearly all fractal generators specifically give permission to use anything created with them commercially. So that is almost a given.

But when I was looking for more conventional resources and found https://publicdomainreview.org/ then found https://www.rawpixel.com/ I was well on my way.

Anybody else ever delve into these resources? Or is this part of what makes my stuff unique?

If others do, share your resource links! I think Public Domain content is going to be used more and more because many famous characters are now Public Domain, like (the original illustrative styles ONLY!) Winnie The Pooh, Mickey Mouse, Sherlock Holmes and many more. You have to be careful to find out which incarnations are Public and which are not, but The Possibilities Are Infinite (to steal the catch phrase from Fractal Forums). Even one of my favorite characters is now Public Domain - John Carter.

Here’s a link to a list of 42 characters you can incorporate freely into your work (again, only some styles are PD, Winnie The Pooh has to look like the original A. A. Milne illustrations - no red shirt, etc!). 41 Best Public Domain Characters You Can Use | CharacterHub

I rarely use the characters, but it’s good to know we can. I mostly stick to the public domain Scientific Illustrations and music, rarely using texts or characters - but it does open up a floodgate of royalty free resources for us cheap fish poops (bass turds).

Am I alone in this?

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What kind of resources are you looking for ? for example images for without copyright owner or something similar ? what kind of stuff ?

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Yeh, like anything, fonts, colours, graphics, images, characters etc. make sure you have the correct usage and license for them. There were old stock photos of Katee Sackhoff that a friend of mine used to use all the time. Not sure you can still get them.

There’s a responsibility to the client to ensure that there are no legal issues going forward.

I don’t rely heavily on any one resource, public domain or not.

I did need a photo of an old Irish butchers for the cover of a book before, stock sites just didn’t do them. So I went to the national library and found a range of photos I liked. I asked could I use it for the cover of a book, they said absolutely, but they only had a glass plate of it, and I asked how much would it cost to get it printed and scanned in high resolution - they said it was free - and they did it for me, got the the glass plate and made the photo and scanned it for me and sent it on.

I think I just had to add a credit to the imprint. But it was great that they did it.

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Oh and FlickR, I found a few photos I wanted to use for a magazine, and I emailed the photographer and asked if he had the hi-res and could I use them and how much he’d want.

His response was honestly ‘Thanks for asking’ he was shocked that he was asked, and said something like most people just take them and use them without asking.

He was so happy, he didn’t want anything, he just wanted a credit for the photos and a link to his FlickR account printed alongside it, which we didn’t want to do, so he accepted a footnote on the Table of Contents page - and then he just wanted about 10 copies fo the magazine for himself to give out to friends or whatever.

Pretty sweet deal.

Asking is the best policy.

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Definitely copyright free stuff! That was the entire reason for seeking these resources. I am not willing to pay for stock photography and my Adobe software is the CS6 Suite, so no access to their stock images..But a lot of the old time Scientific Illustrations are great fun and can be reworked into a wide variety of things.

Also, when I needed music for a web game, I found a recording from the 1930s of an archeological expedition who visited a pygmy tribe and recorded some of their music. Why pay a licensing fee for music others can easily access. While the access to this music is equally easy, very few people would even think to try it out!

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Well done!

Great respect for those of us who play by the rules :+1:

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Copyright is not “Free” as you said, tell me something if you are a Graphic Designer are you going to give your creations for “Free”? Or as a “Free Stuff!”?. There is a web page, they have some stuff, but it is not FREE as you can imagine, they have a friendly licence (I think you are confused Free with Friendly Licence). Some creators are protecting their creations from piracy or plagiarism. The webpage I am telling they have some stuff, but they have with a Friendly Licence, and it is not FREE!. Are you interested ?

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If you are looking for some design app or something like adobe software but different, the Gimp, Krita, Inkscape, Scribus and Canva Affinity software but they are alternatives and not like Adobe software I mean the quality is not the same.

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And Remember : Let’s make Copyright GREAT AGAIN!

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Unsure what you are asking here. I do often post my content completely free, declaring it Public Domain and specifically stating that it can be used however people like (apart from claiming they created it from scratch unless they are evil, then they can) (yes, I have phrased it that way!) but derivative works can be called their own and no restrictions of any kind on redistribution, printing or anything.

Public Domain stuff does not require a license for any of that. It is completely copyright free and now belongs to the public.

I am happy with my CS6 Suite. Some say it will eventually stop working, but they forget about just using old hardware to run it on too. It will last the rest of my life because there will always be sources for old hardware. Cheap ones too! But the Lifetime License means I never have to buy anything until I choose to do so.

NEVER! No references to that particular political group will help anything. Copyright is great for living Artists and, in some cases, their estates, but 50 years after they die - for the most part - copyright is totally irrelevant so no, let’s keep Public Domain Great! It never stopped being great so the “again” is not needed.

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Tell me one thing, if you are a Graphic Designer, how would you protect your material or designs and not to be ¨ copied” or cloned by someone else? That’s why copyright exist!. Copyright protects your material and stuff from the piracy and anarchy of other people ! Let’s make Copyright GREAT AGAIN!

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What?

50 years after I’m dead??

Isn’t that a bit extreme to expect protections for? Because that’s when works go public domain under current law, so again - I fail to see the relevance of the question to the topic at hand. Copyright is great already, but it was never intended to last for eternity.

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Copyright exists automatically once you create an original work. It does not need a stamp, seal of approval, registration, or even a © notice. The © symbol can help signal ownership, but it is not what creates the copyright.

I think in the US that registration (®) matters. You can own copyright without registering it, but registration gives you stronger enforcement options and is generally required before suing over infringement in the US.

For the trademark part TM can be used when claiming a trademark even without registration.

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For me Public Domain for me is fine, and also I Think in the USA, but I am not sure that it is 70 years and not 50 years, as I checked with AI :

“ Copyright Expiration: Protection ends after a set period, which varies by country (e.g., 70 years after the author’s death in the EU/UK, or 95 years from publication in the US).

  1. Not Eligible: Facts, ideas, discoveries, or U.S. federal government works generally cannot be copyrighted.”

Btw I am not “Extremist” but some people yes or even Ai they go for the extreme (this is not about you or all people here in the forum), I am speaking about some AI tools which they “whatever it is possible to copy and clone”. And about Public Domain stuff on the internet then I am not sure about.

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I use quite a bit of public domain stuff in the historical projects I work on. All the usual suspects. LOC, NARA, NASA, some library resources, etc. And as usual, not all public domain resource photos are public domain. Do your Due Diligence.

I’ve done so much public domain work, it really REALLY bothers me to see images I know are license free popping up on certain stock site that charge $$$ (three figures) for usage. The other thing that really irks me are seeing “Creative Commons 0” images for sale on stock sites for $$$. I’ve mentioned it. They just shrug and say “public domain?” no rules broken. Yeah, whatever.

I’ve had people remove photos from their Flickr feeds when I’ve contacted them to ask if I could use them. Suggests to me they weren’t theirs to begin with. :rofl:

I’ve had others who wouldn’t believe I’m offering them money to use their photo and wouldn’t provide contact info.

I had one who, like Smurf, the person couldn’t believe I asked because it was already all over the internet. It was important to my client that I found the original source, so I did. And we paid a relatively small fee for it. That source told me they were in the midst of serving C&Ds to all the websites that had stolen it.

My clients often like real names for their photo credits, not silly stock avatars. That doesn’t sit too well with some sources either.

I was very sad when the LOC closed their camera department about a decade ago. There was one lady there I talked to on pretty much a weekly basis. And the folks that would do my photo repros at the NARA were great too. Local group, was all they did. Schedule appointments to scan glass negatives. Had to schedule so the negatives could be collected from cold storage out in Virgina somewhere. Even though the usage of the image was public domain, we had to pay for the scans, or in the really old days, duplicate negatives.

I miss that part of my job. Been gone, for the most part, for the last several years.

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Ah. I knew it was changed. It did used to be 50 years after death. Think it changed in the 1970s, but I tend to stick to things I am certain are, indeed, Public Domain. The 2 sites I linked to have sections about the details of copyrights so I treat them as authoritative sources but there is still the chance of mistakes, I suppose.

Absolutely!

Most of what I use is over a century old and some stuff from the 1500s through 1700s so don’t usually do my diligence on all of those - especially if they are form a source I trust. But you are right and even those should be independently verified. Unsure how on some of the ancient stuff though…

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So Lets make Public Domain Works GREAT AGAIN!

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If you want to start your own business i suggest you to start Ecommerce work.

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Even photos over 100 years old can still fall under the Estates of any of the deceased people in the photos. Especially if they were famous. Rights of Publicity vary from state to state in the US.

Gotta say I’ve not heard of any of the sources you mentioned in your first post….but I’ve been out of this a few years now.

This is my go-to resource for yearly updates on US copyright info (Rights of Publicity are a totally different animal.) It’s broken down into easily digestible pieces:

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You might want to check the Sound Recordings copyright terms on your 1930s music. Recorded in or out of the US, there looks to be a number of years left on that copyright. Unless the music was published in one of the Special Cases countries.

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