Sorry for the naive question, can anyone explain what it means for something to enter the public ___domain? What is the public ___domain anyway? Is there a database somewhere of all the public things?
Does it mean anyone can put batman on a t-shirt, sell that t-shirt and keep all the profit? Does it mean batman movies can be pirated without repercussion?
There is the Public Domain Review[1] "dedicated to the exploration of curious and compelling works from the history of art, literature, and ideas" that have fallen into the public ___domain.
Think about Shakespeare's works for a good example of something in the public ___domain. Anyone can use Romeo & Juliet's characters any way they like. Similarly, there is a huge amount of derivative work of Price and Prejudice[2]
I'm not an expert by any means, but yes you could put Batman on a shirt and sell it. I'm not sure how it works for movies, but with audio the actual recordings are still copyrighted for some time after the music itself is in public ___domain.
It would be my guess that any works created after the first one still have copyright on the content itself. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Does it mean anyone can put batman on a t-shirt, sell that t-shirt and keep all the profit? Does it mean batman movies can be pirated without repercussion?