“Reverse piracy” is a systematic restoration, restriction, and commercialisation of work that has already entered the public domain. Thus, public domain material, despite being legally public, becomes functionally private,2 and the public loses the right to access it via an invisible technological fence. When users access public domain works, they must agree to limitations on redistribution, commercial use, device-based access rules, and prohibitions on modifying the digital file.9 This ultimately transforms the public domain works into “conditional access assets”. Public domain guardianship authoritiesCurrently, there is no institutional defender for public domain content. Moreover, a simple idea of “watermarking,” which would be a uniform, cryptographically verifiable mark stating “This work belongs to the public domain”, could be embedded into public domain works.

Source: Mint February 02, 2026 07:41 UTC