Using others' work

- Using others' work. There's a lot of mythology, in my opinion, around whether you can use something that someone else has created. People refer to the word public domain. I'll share more about what that means. But there's a common idea that maybe they can change a little bit of something and use it, or that they can just use a little bit of something, of someone else's work and that it's not infringement either. So, the first question is, what is public domain? Public domain means that it's no longer protected by copyright law. For most copyrights, that means that the author needs to have been dead for 70 years. So, if you're confident that the author of the thing you'd like to use is long since dead, whether it be a painting, a book, poetry, once it's in the public domain, it's free to use. But up till that point, the only way something could be in the public domain is if the author themselves has dedicated it. There are no formalities required for work to be protectable. Creators…