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You may not plan on becoming a famous movie director, but you still have a use for public domain films, broadcasts, commercials, and sound bites. These can be used on websites, or to create CD’s or DVD’s that you can sell.

By far, Buyout Footage at http://www.buyoutfootage.com/pages/pd.html is one of the hottest places to obtain film. There is also great film that you can use at http://www.archive.org/details/prelinger and also at The Library of Congress at
http://www.loc.gov/rr/mopic/.

At the Live Music Archive at Archive.org, which is located at http://www.archive.org/details/etree you can find films of live music shows. You can also find free footage at the UCLA Film and Television Archive which is located at http://cinema.library.ucla.edu/.

While these are excellent sources for finding public domain films, it is important to realize that you must purchase the work from most of these sources, with the exception of the public domain works found at Archive.org. However, the fee may be well worth it depending on what you intend to do with the film that you want.

There are various ways that you can use old film, broadcasts, and commercials for financial gain. You may want to use the entire work, or just use parts of it for your product. You could even make a collection of old commercials for an informative marketing course!

Again, you need to be aware of the format that the film you want is delivered in, and make sure that you have the appropriate software or equipment to manipulate the film to turn it into the product that you want it to be, if editing it is what you have in mind, or to transfer it to the medium that you want it to be on if you just want to change the delivery format. For instance, you may want to change something that is on video tape to DVD.

You can use public domain music and photographs for your website, or for CD’s or DVD’s that you plan to sell. In fact, finding public domain music and photographs is really quite easy, and such items can usually be obtained at no cost.

You can even obtain public domain sheet music, and possibly compile a collection that you can copyright and sell! You could obtain the actual music files for public domain music and create your own music CD as well.

Starting with photographs, there are numerous sources. There are so many collections that exist online, a good place to start your search is at the Wikipedia resource for public domain images, which can be found at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain_image_resources

While this is a great place to start, there are still many other good resources as well.

Other sources for public domain photographs include:

· Eastman House - http://www.eastmanhouse.org
· The New York Public Library - http://www.nypl.org/digital/index.htm
· US Dept. of Interior - http://www.doi.gov/gallery.html

For sheet music, good resources include:

· Choral Public Domain Library - http://www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
· The Music Library - http://mus.lib.ru/index_eng.html
· Sheet Music Archive - http://www.sheetmusicarchive.net/
· Public Domain Music - http://www.pdmusic.org/

For actual public domain music, you should check Musopen at http://www.musopen.com/. Actual music is harder to find then sheet music in the public domain. However, if you can find the sheet music for public domain music, the chances are good that you can probably find the actual music on the Internet as well. Therefore, when you want music files, start by finding the sheet music first, to ensure that it is indeed in the public domain.

Again, most of these resources will not charge for the files. There are some really good finds just waiting to be found – and there is a lot of money to be made from these ‘oldie but goodies’ if they are used in the right way.

The Government publishes a lot of information – on a wide variety of topics. Believe it or not, all of that material is in the public domain – in terms of materials published by the United States Government anyway. Other Governments may have different rules pertaining to this.

When you want to use work that was published by a Government other than the US Government, it is very important that you find out for sure if you are free to use the work, and how you are able to use the work. For instance, Canada claims Crown Copyright to their materials. Each different country has different rules and laws – so make sure you check.

But in terms of materials produced by the United States Government, it is free for anyone to use – and there is literally tons of information waiting for you! Below is a list of US Government Offices where you can obtain free public domain work that was published by the Government.

The Library of Congress – http://catalog.loc.gov

The IRS – http://www.irs.gov

US Government Printing Office – http://www.gpoaccess.gov/cgp/index.html

Government Information Connection - http://www.library.unt.edu/govinfo/subject/catsindx.html

National Security Agency - http://www.nsa.gov/public/

US Department of State - http://www.state.gov/

NARA – http://www.archives.gov

FirstGov – http://www.firstgov.com

Federal Citizen Information Center – http://www.pueblo.gsa.gov

The FBI – http://www.fbi.gov

CDC – http://www.cdc.gov

This is just a small list of the governmental websites that contain information that is in the public domain. Even if these sites don’t have the information published on their website, they will provide instructions of ordering or obtaining publications that they have. The US Government Printing Office is always a good place to start your search.
Furthermore, you can also go to Google at http://www.google.com and type in “not copyrighted” site: .gov or “public domain” site:.gov. Make sure that you include the quotation marks in the appropriate place when searching.