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Free stuff is awesome. The truth is that if it were possible, most of us would be happy to never pay for anything again. Unfortunately, life doesn’t work that way. However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t get free stuff without breaking the law. In fact, you might be surprised by just how much free stuff there really is online. In fact, you can download movies, media, music, photos, and even software for free!
A Few Guidelines
While some stuff is ‘free’ online, it’s illegal if you can walk into a store and buy it. Typically new release items, anything extremely popular, music, or any type of media that is less than 70 years old is not free. Avoid these types of downloads and stick to stuff that’s actually free.
Books
There are thousands of free books online. While some books are originally created with a Public Domain license, meaning that anyone can use it. Most books enter the public domain 70 years after the death of the author, unless someone with the rights has renewed the copyright. Older books (such as those published between 1923 and 1963) were only copyrighted for 28 years after the copyright unless renewed, which lasts 98 years. You can easily check with the Library of Congress to see if the book you want has a renewed copyright. Finally, any book published before 1923 is copyright free; meaning that you can download it and share it all you want. There are several websites dedicated to providing copyright free books including Project Gutenberg and Open Library, although each of these can be somewhat intimidating to search through.
Images
There are millions of copyright free and Creative Commons images on the Internet but it is important to ensure that they are actually copyright free before you use them. A few great places to find unlicensed images include Flickr, Wikipedia Commons, Open Clipart, and more.
Video
Believe it or not, there are a surprising number of free videos and even movies available on the Internet today. In fact, almost any movie created before 1923 is in the public domain because copyright extensions only extended 19 years. Any film created between 1923 and 1964 could be in the public domain, unless it was renewed later, but you can check the copyright dates for the individual film that you want to see before downloading it. Wikipedia maintains an extensive list of post-1923 films that are in the public domain and free to download. You can also search Al Jazeeras Creative Commons Footage, Vimeo, Moshcam, Blip, and YouTube for copyright free video, although Vimeo and YouTube both host copyrighted video as well.
Music
Music is often available for free online but few people know that there are legal ways to download. First, there are a number of artistic works that are in the creative commons or public domain. These works are often older, but many artists do create music in the public domain in hopes of promoting free music. In addition, there are a great deal of live concert recordings recorded with the permission of the band or artist that are also in the public domain. CC Mixter, Magnatune (Sometimes Requires a Subscription Fee), Jamendo, and Museopen are great sites dedicated to free music.
Software
While a great deal of software is not free, there are two major types of software that you can download for no cost. Freeware is any software that is provided free of charge and free of responsibility. Shareware is software that is only available to you on a limited basis, although in some cases it may be fully functional. Most free software is not as good as paid software, but you can easily look up ‘freeware’ plus the type of software you are looking for to find options.
What Now? ?While there are dozens of sites dedicated to promoting free and copyright free material for your perusal, it can be difficult to sort through it all. Plus, unless you’re a Zen master, you’re probably not going to enjoy waiting for everything to download. So? What’s the best course of action? If you look something up, verify that it is in the public domain, and want it, then you might as well download it as a torrent. Torrents are the fastest, safest, and easiest way to download stuff off of the Internet, and free bittorrent clients like Vuze make it easy to manage your files and even send media right to your TV or tablet. Because torrents are a lot faster and easier to search through, you can save a lot of time and then get to your free stuff faster. If you want to check your movie, book, or music for copyright, either search for it at copyright.gov, or look it up and check the original copyright date.
