The first release of copyrighted work into the US public domain in more than two decades is a bonanza for authors and readers—and a reminder that copyright works two ways
In most news and debate around copyright these days, the rightful focus is on dangerous efforts, such as by governments in Canada and South Africa, to erode copyright protections. In the digital era, those in the education space in particular assume that fair use gives them far more unpaid access to authors’ work than it does.
Protecting authors’ ability to earn income from their work is essential. But on January 1 of this year, there was a brilliant demonstration of how important a copyright term’s conclusion is, too, as an unprecedented number of works were released into the public domain in the United States. The country’s drastically extended term of copyright finally expired for works created in 1923. According to Duke University’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain, hundreds of thousands of works (not just books but also films, music, etc.) have entered the public domain from that year—20 years later than they were originally scheduled to do so.
Until 1998, the term of copyright in the States was the life of the author plus 50 years. And every year, a fresh release of material into the public domain was celebrated. But in 1998, the Copyright Term Extension Act—sometimes called the Sonny Bono Act, for the late congressman who had supported it—delayed by 20 years the release of all works created in 1923 and afterward. Public Domain Day wasn’t a reality in the States for two decades.
Life plus 70 years became the new term of copyright, and it’s considered excessive by just about everyone except corporate attorneys at Disney; the 1998 law is also called the Mickey Mouse Act because Disney’s lobbying zeal to protect Steamboat Willie (1928) from being released into the public domain is considered to have played a major role in getting the copyright term extended. As it stands, Mickey Mouse won’t be a free rodent until 2024.
The deluge of works includes writing from Sherwood Anderson, Stephen Vincent Benét, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Miguel de Cervantes, Jean Cocteau, Winston Churchill, Agatha Christie, Joseph Conrad, Walter de la Mare, Robert Frost, Maxim Gorky, Rudyard Kipling, DH Lawrence, Vachel Lindsay, Edgar Lee Masters, Guy de Maupassant, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Bertrand Russell, Vita Sackville-West, Carl Sandberg, Walter Scott, Booth Tarkington, Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf, PG Wodehouse, and many more. Mental Floss helpfully details where you can now access and download these works.
To start familiarizing yourself with what’s now tumbling into the public arena—free for your use in quotations without permission, and even for your development of derivative works—we recommend the Public Domain Review, which has a fine list in several genres of art, and this page at Wikipedia, which lists 1923 works of literature. Additionally, the Duke program has made available an Excel list of works entering the public domain this year. There are also celebratory events, such as one at The Internet Archive in San Francisco, where Cecil B. DeMille’s silent film The Ten Commandments will be shown.
Bottom line: Thanks to the end of the 20-year dry spell caused by the Copyright Term Extension Act, we now can start each year here at Hot Sheet with news of masterworks becoming free for your use in the American public domain. While the Duke program makes it clear that they support fully the proper protections of copyright for authors and other creators, we like how they describe the public domain, too: the second part of the copyright bargain—when your work “enters the realm of free culture.”
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
