Public domain. When works pass out of copyright, they come into the public domain and may be used freely. There is an obvious budgetary attraction to producers for material that in the public domain, but care should be taken that all rights are public domain and not just the obvious ones. As already noted, films that are out of copyright might have components whose underlying rights are still protected. and adaptations will create a new copyright in that version of the work, but if version was in the public domain, it remains so and is available to be used freely, even if the adapted version is not