free public domain movies to download via bittorrent

[mouser]

http://www.publicdomaintorrents.com/

[link from lifehacker]

[app103]

hate to tell you this but most of those movies are NOT public domain.

Just because a movie is old, unknown, indy...or just plain crappy...it's NOT public domain.

The only stuff on that site that could be considered public domain are the old silent movies...or anything they might have that was produced by the government.

Rule of thumb:

for any creative work, whether in music, art, print, video, photos, etc...

if the government made it, it belongs to 'we, the people' and can't be copyrighted.

If it's from before 1920, it's copyright has run out and can't be renewed, and is now public domain. (unless it is trademarked, like most of the Disney things are...that will never run out as long as the Disney company still exists)

[tinyvillager]

Yeah,i poked around in the animation category,and found Betty Boop,if you goto wikipedia's entry for Betty Boop, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Boop  ,at the very bottom  you'll see that Paramount Pictures owns the rights now.I think some stuff though,some how avoids getting pounced on by lawyers.You can find this stuff all day long for a buck a DVD at the dollar stores (Dollar Trees*Franchise*) here in the U.S.,and you just know it's not legit.You get what you pay for too,alot of bad digital transfers,horrible sound,etc.   


P.S.
I ripped my Avatar from one of these dollar a dvd's i was talking about.

[Edvard]

REALLY public domain movies can be had here: http://www.archive.org/details/movies