I like surfing in the public domain to find any great thing worth using and archiving.
Do you know of anything that is in the public domain and is very valuable or worth archiving?
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- Books. Every single masterpiece that was printed before… a certain date (it will depend the country you live in), is available for free online. They are not just ‘free’, they’re concentrated thoughts/cleverness/creativity available to anyone willing to take the time and, sadly nowadays, to make the effort of reading them.
- Not really public domain but close enough: public libraries, most of them will be free and they will also let you access non-public domain books too, even the most recent titles.
For me, it’s an everyday little miracle that publishers have not yet managed to convince lawmakers public libraries should be made illegal… because a lot of those publishers only want us to buy their books, much more than they want us to read them.
Public libraries are one of the most undervalued resource in many countries. One day, they will be gone, and a majority of us will not even care. Sad.
edit: typos.
I often go to musopen.org for music samples and ideas.
I haven’t done it myself, but I plan to watch a bunch of pre-Hays Code movies from the late 20s and early 30s. Many of these movies are in the public domain and more are entering it for the next few years.
Pre code movies are amazing. My mom watches a ton of them on YouTube, and I’ll watch a lot of the time, too. They’re genuinely hilarious to watch a lot of the time, because they showcase just how much hasn’t changed. You feel like, because of media, we practically invented a lot of stuff in the last generation or two, only to watch Mae west talk about mirrors on her ceiling or Marlene Dietrich dress in dress.
Tons of books. Basically anything made before the 1900s.
Wikipedia?
Strictly speaking, I believe that it’s Creative Commons rather than public domain. Pretty similar, but IIRC it addresses some differences in European law.
Great resource, but it’s not in the public domain.
Also, I would describe it more as “taken for granted” than “underrated.”
I can’t speak to public domain or not but it is available for download. If Wikipedia had a problem with it being downloaded, I’m sure they would be asking Google to remove the Kiwix app from Google Play.
what does being able to download it have to do with it not being public domain?
I can’t speak to public domain…
Commenter admits that it isn’t public domain. So Wikipedia isn’t a great suggestion for this answer, although I would argue that it is indeed “very valuable or worth archiving”
Wikipedia is under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License which again, isn’t public domain. However it is a largely permissible license which allows people to do close to whatever they’d like with the material - which some people might find similarity with the public domain if they don’t know how the licensing works.
