Celebrating Public Domain Day

January 1 is Public Domain Day for works still under copyright that were first released in 2028:

Public Domain Day 2024

The article includes selected lists of books, plays, films, and musical compositions being liberated, so to speak, in 2024. It also explains some of the intricacies of copyright law and explores the question, "Why Celebrate the Public Domain?"

Most famously, of course, the earliest version of Mickey and Minnie Mouse becomes available for public reproduction and reinterpretation in 2024 (with some qualifications and caveats -- trademark, for instance, has a longer and more tenacious life than copyright):

Mickey Mouse Will Soon Belong to You and Me

As an unintended side effect of what this essay labels "overlong" copyright protection under U.S. law, "many properties with less pedigree than Winnie [the Pooh] or Minnie can disappear or be forgotten with their copyrights murky." As Cory Doctorow is quoted as saying, the remarkable 95-year endurance of some classic works "makes you think about the stuff that we must have lost, that would still have currency," or might have, if that material had been freely available for reproduction and distribution.

As the first article cited above puts it, "Most older works are 'orphan works,' where the copyright owner cannot be found at all. Now that these works are in the public domain, anyone can make them available to the public. This enables access to our cultural heritage -- access to materials that might otherwise be forgotten. 1928 was a long time ago and the vast majority of works from 1928 are not commercially available. You couldn’t buy them, or even find them, if you wanted. When they enter the public domain in 2024, anyone can rescue them from obscurity and make them available, where we can all discover, enjoy, and breathe new life into them."

Having had the experience of editing two paperback fiction anthologies in the early 1970s, I've often mentally grumbled about the problems inherent in the "life of author plus seventy years" rule that reigned for several decades. An editor who wanted to "rescue" an undeservedly neglected story from obscurity would have to find out whether copyright was renewed under the older system, when the author died, and who holds reprint rights -- if they're still in force -- in the present. For a very old, little-known work, the latter information might be almost impossible to discover, as the above quote mentions. Nobody benefits from continuation of the copyright, and readers who might enjoy the story and appreciate the long-dead writer's creation are deprived of that opportunity.

As Cory Doctorow, again, says in an essay on the Medium site, "First in 1976, and then again in 1998, Congress retroactively extended copyright’s duration by 20 years, for all works, including works whose authors were unknown and long dead, whose proper successors could not be located. Many of these authors were permanently erased from history as every known copy of their works disappeared before they could be brought back into our culture through reproduction, adaptation and re-use."

Public Domain Is a Banger

His characterization of this process as "slow-motion arson" might be a bit extreme, but he makes a point well worth considering.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.