Public domain is a legally narrowing 'national park' where freely borrowable material is always receding from the present

Oswald uses the metaphor of a national park with no guards to describe public domain: legally defined but practically hard to navigate, with unclear borders that shift as copyright terms extend. Composers like Charles Ives could borrow merrily from folk and popular sources because much of that music was genuinely in the public domain of his era. Today’s composers who want to follow Ives’s model are restricted to the same old material Ives himself used — the present is always copyright-protected. The core tension: the creative value of cultural heritage is highest when it can be freely recombined, but economic incentives push copyright terms ever longer, shrinking the accessible commons.

Examples

A folk song Ives quoted freely a century ago can still be quoted by a composer today without clearance. But a 1964 Motown recording cannot — and its copyright will persist for decades, keeping recent material out of the accessible commons.

Assessment

A composer today wants to sample from a vinyl record released in 1960. What questions must they answer to determine whether the recording is in the public domain? Name at least three distinct legal factors.