The public domain is the body of works for which intellectual property rights no longer apply (or were inapplicable to begin with). Works in the public domain may be freely copied, distributed, altered, and built upon without attribution or permission.

Public domain status varies by country. Works may be in the public domain in some countries while still being protected by intellectual property rights in others. For example, Canada uses a life + 50 years system while the US uses a 95 year system (as of 2004). In the US, works created by the federal government and its agencies enter the public domain upon creation.

Most legal systems do not provide a way to donate works to the public domain, but legal tools such as the Creative Commons CC0 Public Domain Dedication are sometimes used to achieve this goal to the extent that is legally possible.

For more information:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain
http://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/public-domain/welcome/

Disclaimer: This article is not legal advice. The information provided is not a substitute for legal advice and is not complete.

Usage note: This tag only applies to the public domain status of the image/video it is tagged to, it does not refer to the public domain status of characters or settings found in the image/video.

See also:

• creative_commons (not the same thing)