You can get help with your research, even when you can't come to campus!
Use the icon above to contact a reference librarian by chat or email.
If chat is not available at the moment, email library-reference@redwoods.edu, and a librarian will respond as quickly as possible. Please allow at least 48 hours for responses to emails!
This guide is designed to provide basic, general information about copyright, and does not constitute legal advice. The links to third party sites in this guide are provided for your convenience. College of the Redwoods does not take responsibility for the content of these other sites.
Very few sound recordings are in the public domain in the United States; in fact, most sound recordings will not enter the public domain until February 2067! However, there are many sound recordings that have been licensed with Creative Commons. See the Creative Commons page for resources.
Public Domain works are not protected by copyright law and, therefore, they are freely available for everyone to use. There are several ways in which a work passes into the public domain:
What this means for your academic projects is that you can use as much of the work as you would like to support your instruction, research, publication, creative work, etc. without needing permission from the original copyright owner.