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License & Copyright

Intellectual Property Policy, Public Domain Framework, and Community Branching Terms

1. Executive Summary

Public Domain Classics: Canonical poems by historical master poets (such as William Shakespeare, Yunus Emre, Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, William Blake, and Robert Frost) are in the Public Domain. Under international copyright law, no license, permission, or royalty payment is required to publish, reproduce, recite, adapt, translate, or branch these works.
Historical Translations: Translations published before 1928 or whose translators died more than 70 years ago (such as Edward FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát or R. A. Nicholson’s translations of Rumi) have likewise entered the public domain worldwide.
Community Contributions: User-submitted variations, modernizations, translations, and original stanzas remain the creative expression of their respective authors, shared under collaborative branching terms.

2. Why a License Is Not Needed for Classic Poems

Copyright protection is not perpetual. Under the international Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works and domestic copyright legislation (such as U.S. Title 17, European Union Directive 2006/116/EC, and Republic of Turkey Law No. 5846):

Economic rights over creative works expire 70 years after the death of the creator (the "Life + 70" rule), or 95 years from publication for older works published prior to 1928.
When copyright expires, works automatically enter the Public Domain, belonging to the shared cultural heritage of humanity.

Consequently, no copyright holder or estate holds exclusive proprietary rights over these masterworks. Any reader, writer, or platform is legally free to publish, recite, translate, modernize, or create derivative adaptations (Nazire, modernizations, variations) without requesting permission or paying licensing fees.

3. Creative Commons Public Domain Mark (PDM 1.0)

🏛️ Creative Commons Public Domain Mark 1.0

"This work has been identified as being free of known restrictions under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights. You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission."

Reference: creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0

4. Ethical Attribution & Branch Lineage

While public domain literature does not require legal permission, Hey Poet! practices strict moral and literary respect:

Clear Attribution: Master poets are cataloged under verified master profiles (e.g. @Shakespeare, @YunusEmre, @EmilyDickinson) with biographical summaries, historical eras, and translator acknowledgments.
Immutable Canonical Base: The original public domain poem always remains preserved at the root of the lineage tree, with user adaptations branching outward with explicit purpose tags (Translation, Modernization, Response / Nazire, or Variation).

5. Master Portraits & Artwork Attribution (Wikimedia Commons)

Visual depictions and portraits of classical masters featured across Hey Poet! are sourced directly from Wikimedia Commons: Wikimedia Commons:

Public Domain Artworks: Historical paintings, daguerreotypes, and miniatures whose copyright terms have expired worldwide (under PD-Art, PD-old, and PD-US).
Creative Commons Photography: Contemporary photographs of public statues, monuments, and scholarly drawings provided under free culture licenses (e.g., CC BY-SA 4.0, CC BY 3.0, and CC0).
Individual Profile Attribution: Each master's public profile page directly credits the artist or creator, links to the original Wikimedia Commons file record, and displays the corresponding license terms.

6. Notice & Takedown Procedure

Hey Poet! operates in full accordance with the notice-and-takedown principles of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. § 512) and international intellectual property laws.

If you are a copyright holder, legal representative, or author estate and believe that any text, translation, or media on this platform has been cataloged in error or is not in the public domain, please contact:

webmaster@heypoet.com