Is there any website or directory that provides content that you can legally copy, modify and distribute? Like Wikipedia? You can use SE to look for content in public domain, but it takes quite an effort to go through SERP to find anything useful, so I'm wondering if there is some central location that I can access content in public domain or that distributed under GPL.
There are lots of places where you can get articles etc for your site, but while you can use them, you can't then modify them and pass them off as your own content. I personally don't know of any big resource that does this.
http://www.commoncontent.org/ is a good place to check, but they only compile links; they don't compile content.
Derivative works are allowed though your allowed to use a piece and furthur it to it as long as u cite it.
You might want to take a look at US Government publication as most of them do not have copyrights attached to them.
Actually they do in a sense. They specifically state that the document is in public domain. They also need to do that, because the current copyright law makes any content on the web copyrighted to the author automatically, i.e., if the type of copyright is not explicitly specified, then the content is copyrighted to the author, it's not in public domain or GPLed (automatically).
I recently heard about goarticles.com. Never used anything from them, but I believe all you need to do to use the articles there is to give an author credit.
Wikipedia is the best I've found but the only problem is to use it legally you must state it's a GPL and allow other users or viewers to copy it....
Actually, they don't since they don't qualify for copyright protection to begin with. http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html#piu
I believe you spammed or you posted at the wrong place. The address you give is not a functioning page on the site. Do you have any source to support your point?