what prevents someone from laying a copyright claim on something in public domain ?
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The public domain is a repository for things that have had their copyright expire, built in to the copyright laws. Once something enters the public domain, NOBODY owns it and nobody can ever own it ever again. If you create a book using a public domain character, you can copyright everything in that book EXCEPT that particular character. That’s how the laws were set up.
Online copyright claim systems include a system for people hit with claims to appeal. If the claim is obviously spurious (like the material is original to the creator or in the public domain), this appeal will succeed. Someone who knowingly files a false claim like this is violating the law, can be countersued, and is likely to be ignored by the platform in the future.
The DMCA, the law which lays the ground rules for online copyright claims, is notorious for its bias towards presumed rights holders, and this had led to lots of justified complaining about overreaching copyright claims. However, these are typically situations where a reasonable person could grant that there may have been a violation (even if that violation was small or unintentional). The system is much better at dismissing/punishing claims made just for the purposes of harassment. At worst, you get people who honestly believe that their intellectual property has been violated even if it hasn’t and so pursue their claim long past the point where a lawyer would advise them to stop (see e.g. that Omegaverse lady).
Nothing prevents them from laying a takedown claim. But when they do the claim is examined and if the object in question is in the public domain the claim is denied.
If anyone tries to claim ownership of something in the public domain and tries to pursue it to the extent that it goes to court*, then it will be dismissed. There is no legal leg to stand on.
However, *some* aspects of this can be muddled, as in the case of Sherlock Holmes. Until very recently, only the pre-20th century entries in the Holmes canon were in PD (many people don’t actually realize that the stories continued far into the 20’s). This meant you could create a work using the characters and elements of plots from the works before the cutoff date. However, there was quite a protracted legal battle when it came to elements that were deemed as resembling the books that were published *after*. The film Enola Holmes, the Doyle estate contended, was in violation of their copyright because the characterization of Henry Cavil’s Holmes as kindly and honorable (rather than manic and prickly) was more in line with the characterization from the later stories. This was widely considered to be a cynical cash grab by the estate and the case was [reportedly settled out of court.](https://copyrightlately.com/themencode-pdf-viewer-sc/?tnc_pvfw=ZmlsZT1odHRwczovL2NvcHlyaWdodGxhdGVseS5jb20vd3AtY29udGVudC91cGxvYWRzLzIwMjAvMTIvQ29uYW4tRG95bGUtRXN0YXRlLXYuLVNwcmluZ2VyLVN0aXB1bGF0aW9uLXRvLURpc21pc3MtV2l0aC1QcmVqdWRpY2UucGRmJnNldHRpbmdzPTEwMTEwMDExMDEwMTAxMTExMDAmbGFuZz1lbi1VUw==#page=&zoom=&pagemode=none)
*There are cases on YouTube where people acting in bad faith will use YouTube’s copyright claim system to claim rights to works which are in PD in order to claim a portion of the video’s profit or out and out demonetize the video. But that is an instance where it’s usually not worth it for people to pursue a counter claim in court. As such, YouTube is full of people exploiting this system to bad ends. This is one of the reasons a lot of gaming YouTubers will work with MCN (Multi-Channel Networks) because these companies will have an existing relationship with YouTube’s own team and a procedure for clearing this sort of thing.
Once something is in the public domain, it means it’s no longer protected by copyright. That means nobody can claim copyright over it again. It’s free for anyone to use, modify, or share without any legal restrictions. If someone tries to claim copyright on a public domain work, it wouldn’t hold up legally, and they could face consequences for making false claims.
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