In one of the most fascinating applications of public domain I’ve seen in a while, I present Dracula Feed at http://dracula-feed.blogspot.com/ . Bram Stoker’s original novel is written in the form of diary entries and letters, and someone has had the brillian insight to post this public domain material in a new form: a blog. Entries to the blog will be posted on the corresponding dates of the original material.
I land on the ‘information wants to be free’ perspective, while still respecting a healthy copyright practice. In the time since Stoker wrote his novel, copyright has been scaled. enlarged, grown, and extended beyond what many (myself included) would consider healthy. This new format for Bram Stoker’s words is an excellent example of how letting material enter public domain can actually allow the material to gain new audiences and remain culturally relevant.
Oh, and if you doubt the intrinsic academic value of Vampires, here is a brief article, as relayed to me by Elenuial, on how vibrant and interdisciplinary a topic the infamous bloodsuckers can be: http://io9.com/5241252/physicists-prove-that-vampires-could-not-exist
