Public Domain Mark (PDM) is a

symbol A symbol is a mark, sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, object, or relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by creating linkages between otherwise very different conc ...

used to indicate that a work is free of known

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...

restrictions and therefore in the

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work A creative work is a manifestation of creative effort including fine artwork (sculpture, paintings, drawing, sketching, performance art), dance, writing (literature), filmmaking, ...

. It is analogous to the

copyright symbol The copyright symbol, or copyright sign, (a circled capital letter C for copyright), is the symbol used in copyright notices for works other than sound recordings.17 U.S.C. The use of the symbol is described by the Universal Copyright Conven ...

, which is commonly used to indicate that a work is copyrighted, often as part of a

copyright notice In United States copyright law, a copyright notice is a notice of statutorily prescribed form that informs users of the underlying claim to copyright ownership in a published work. Copyright is a form of protection provided by US law to author ...

. The Public Domain Mark was developed by

Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...

and is only an indicator of the public domain status of a work -- it itself doesn't ''release'' a copyrighted work into the public domain like

CC0 A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work".A "work" is any creative material made by a person. A painting, a graphic, a book, a song/lyrics ...

. The symbol is encoded in

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...

as , which was added in Unicode 13.0. As there is no single definition of public domain and copyright laws differ by jurisdiction, a work can be in the public domain in some countries while still being under copyright in others (so called hybrid status). It is also difficult to assess the legal status of many works. The PDM is recommended to be used only for works that are likely free from any copyright restrictions ''worldwide''.

References

External links

Public Domain Mark
Creative Commons Public domain {{publish-stub

See also

References

External links