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So what happens when the copyright term is over?

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You're dead. I'm sorry. It's been a few decades. What now?

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Well according to the law, at that point the work falls into the public domain.

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Copyright no longer exists.

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Anyone can literally do anything they want to with it,

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though I guess if you were to try and tell people that you're the one who originally wrote "Romeo and Juliet"

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you might get a few sideways glances.

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Usually a work enters the public domain after it's formal copyright has expired.

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There's a few ways that that could happen.

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Usually it's enough time has lapsed

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or in the case of a lot of work of the 20th century when copyright laws were a little different than they are today,

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that's work copyright hadn't been properly renewed before the deadline.

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We don't have to renew copyright anymore, but they used to have to.

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Some work can actually be put into the public domain right from the beginning though.

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So if you want to write a song or create a collection of icons and make it public domain, you can do that.

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Now we're going to talk about how to do it later on.

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A fun example of creating new works from the public domain is "The Wizard of Oz" okay?

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So the original book, Frank L. Baum's "The Wizard of Oz", is in the public domain.

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Go ahead! Make a "Wizard of Oz" movie. Go nuts. Whatever you want to do.

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And that's just what Disney did pretty recently.

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They made "Oz The Great and Powerful"

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using characters from the novels.

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But in 1939 MGM made "The Wizard of Oz", which I'm sure you've seen.

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That film is not in the public domain yet.

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And believe it or not, Dorothy's ruby slippers from the MGM film are not in the books.

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Those were invented specifically for the movie.

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So if you watch "Oz The Great and Powerful", that's why there's no ruby slippers in it.

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Going even further than that, Disney had to make sure that the Wicked Witch of the West's green skin

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wasn't too close to that color green that they'd used in 1939.

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It's crazy stuff for sure, but it illustrates the limitations of public domain.

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There's a big difference between the work that is a public domain

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and not just new versions of it but actual recordings of it.

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And this is important.

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You might want to use some Bach or some Mozart in a video that you're making to advertise your new Android app.

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That's fine as far as that original Bach piece goes.

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But that recording of the song that you bought on iTunes, that's probably copyrighted.

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The song is public domain, but the recording is copyrighted.

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You have to understand that difference whenever you think you're working with something that's in the public domain.

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Just be careful out there.