January 1st isn’t just New Years Day; there’s another little holiday wrapped up inside.
It’s Public Domain Day: the moment when a year’s worth of literature, music, film, television, pop culture, poetry, and science enters the public domain and becomes free to use, reprint, and alter.
According to Standard eBooks, the public domain concept stretches back to the founding of our country, with the Framers desiring a loose and restricted intellectual property law in order to promote the advance of sciences and the arts.
As the United States began its march through the centuries, the period of intellectual copyright was elongated continuously through lobbying of businesses looking use the levers of power to stifle competition and thus innovation.
This process continued until it took 95 years for material to enter the public domain.
“2019 was the year in which new works were finally scheduled to enter the public domain,” Standard eBooks wrote. “And as that year drew closer, it became clear that these corporations wouldn’t try to extend copyright yet again—making it the first year in almost a hundred years in which a significant amount of art and literature once again entered the US public domain.”
This year it means anything published in 1930 will enter the public domain, which includes books by Franz Kafka, Langston Hughes, Jim Corbett, and Agatha Christie. It includes works like As I Lay Dying, How to Make Friends and Influence People, Vile Bodies, Ash Wednesday, and 4 Nancy Drew entries. They are available for free on Standard eBooks.
Beyond literature, according Public Domain Review, the papers of Albert Einstein, the 1930 film All Quiet on the Western Front, the discography of Charlie Parker, images and reproductions of works by the artist Barbara Hepworth, and the photographs of journalist Walker Evans, will all enter the public domain.
This is because the US, and many, many other countries including Russia and the UK, have a “life plus 70 years rule” which allows for copyright to last the duration of the holder’s life, plus 70 years beyond.
That means anyone who died in 1955 will see their copyright expire and their works enter the public domain.
CELEBRATE Public Domain Day By Picking Up A Free eBook Of These Authors…