Introduction
This is a page I didn't ever think I'd write. I've moaned several times that when looking for good public domain or creative commons sources that most of the sites I've found are just lists of sites where you can find public domain or creative commons files, but not the files themselves. So why did I write this one? Because these are sites that I've found most useful when looking for material for my YouTube channel and other projects and most of the other sites I found just direct you to other similar lists. These, apart from some very large listing sites, actually take you to the download sites.
About Public Domain and Creative Commons
Center for the Study of the Public Domain
Creative Commons
Creative Commons License - Wikipedia
Public Domain - Wikipedia
Types of Licenses
General / Multi-purpose sites
Creative Commons
Internet Archive
Library of Congress
Penn State Media Commons
Picryl - Pycyl describes itself as "The World's Largest Public Domain Media Search Engine"
Pixabay - images, music, video and sound effects
Wikimedia Commons
Nearly all material on US and European government sites was created by or for government use and is in the public domain. This includes much material in the British National Archives and even the CIA World Factbook
Audio Tracks
CCMixter
Dramacore
Elctrobel
Free Music Archive
Free PD
Ibeat
Internet Archive - Audio Archive
Moby
Fonts
Images
Flickr Commons
Flickr Creative Commons
Free Digital Photos
FreeImages
Free Images UK
Geograph - Images of the UK
Google Image Search
NASA Image Archive
Open Clip Art Library
Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection
Photo Everywhere
PikWizard
Pixabay
Rawpixel
Realia Project
Smithsonian Open Access
The Museums of the City of Paris
The Public Domain Review
Wikipedia - list of public domain image libraries
Yale Center for British Art
Yet More Free Stuff in the Public Domain - A list maintained by Adobe
Sound Effects
Free Loops
Free SFX
Free Sound
Pixabay Sound Effects
JSFXR - Online sound effect generator
Video Clips
AV Geeks
Detonation Films- free explosions and more!
Internet Archive - Community Video
Internet Archive - Ephemeral Films
Internet Archive - Moving Picture Archive
Internet Archive - VJ Loops
National Archives - Public Information Films
Pixabay Video
Prelinger Archives
Favourites on the Free Music Archive
Other Favourites
"Type Your Name Here Short" by Jahzzar and "Congrizzle 4evzzz" by The Very Most - used in Redbird SRA: May 21, 2006
"Tony Alva" by Opal Book Club (Internet Archive but MP3 not available for download) - used in Opal Book Club - "Tony Alva"
"Dropping out of School" by Brad Sucks (Jamendo) used in The Bronconator
Free Stuff in Use
I love what Postmodern Jukebox did by taking two old out of copyright public domain films, Pot o' Gold (1941) and Hi-De-Ho (1947) and put them to a remixed version of Thrift Shop. This was remixed from the Postmodern Jukebox with Robyn Adele Anderson version of Macklemore and Ryan Lewis' original Thrift Shop.