Nowadays the use of the Internet has been increasing. More and more people are lured by its technical ease and speed. And very often namely the simplicity is the reason why people mistakenly presume that to conduct Net business is this effortless as well.
News
You have several businesses and so much work that 24 hours a day are not enough to be on the horse? - Then in some time you can find that you are totally exhausted! There are some brilliant solutions here. One of them - the public domain material.
Why do you conduct business? - To accumulate wealth. But what do you usually choose in your business - money or love? There has been a lot of research on the topic. The findings are the same: if you pick love - you will become a millionaire. But if money is your primary aim - you will never win.
Article
Copyrighted or not?
There are a lot of works from the public domain on the Internet. It seems to be they are all free to use and change. But you still have to ask this question: how to determine if the creation is free to utilize it the way I want? - Because sometimes several parts of the same book are under protection, whereas all the other pages are in the public domain! Moreover, in some cases even the Copyright Office does not provide the obvious answer.
Well, there are different solutions to this. Here, for example, you can find the lists of literary works' renewals: http://www.kingkong.demon.co.uk/ccer/ccer.htm (since 1950) and http://www.copyright.gov/search/cohm.html (since 1978).
You can also make an independent search: knowing the year of the first publication, add 28 years to this date (or 29, or 27 – sometimes it can work). Then you will see if there's a new edition of this item available. (On the condition that the work was republished). Why 28? - Of course, you remember that all the works which were published before 1978, they had to be renewed in 28-year term. You can search in Google directly, or in your library catalogues, plus in online libraries. Try also checking for renewals the same way.
However, sometimes it still will be hard to decide whether the book (music, video, picture) is under protection or not. What to do in this case? If you want to use the public domain work for your business, where you will compete with other money-makers – here you have to be especially careful. And in case when you cannot decide – contact an attorney.