Tag: Copyright

It is the third annual public domain day in the United States. January 2019 was the first time in a long time that anything covered by copyright in the US entered the public domain. This year makes 3 years of stuff finally making it to the point that they can be freely distributed, built upon, reworked, or used however anyone wishes.

One cool option for using public domain material this year is to check out the Gaming Like Its 1925 game jam over on itch.io. This game jam is hosted by Some very awesome people who are interested in promoting the public domain and working to make copyright work for the people once again. There are prizes available and just a lot of fun to be had there for all interested.

And just like every year, the Duke Law School has published an article highlighting many of the works that have entered the public domain at midnight last night. There is a ton of books, movies, music, non-fiction, and a lot more that are now available for anyone.

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Happy Public Domain Day Everyone! This is a momentous occasion as this is the first year since the 1978 Copyright expansion that the US has actually had one of these. Today, the first works from 1923 will enter the public domain in the US and it is a bittersweet moment for everyone who cares about the progress of art and science. Sweet for the wonderful works that people will be able to distribute freely without risk of being sued or jailed for doing so. Bitter for all the works that have been lost because the owner of the copyright didn’t care about preservation or because the copyright owner cannot be found.

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January 1st of each year is what is colloquially referred to as Public Domain Day. It is the day that works enter the public domain after their copyright terms have expired. At least in most countries outside the US. The US has gone decades without anything entering the public domain, but thankfully, 2018 will be the last year this is so. Unless Congress succumbs to the whims of the Motion Picture Industry and extends copyright again.

Every year, the Duke Law School publishes a report about the state of the public domain on January 1st and this year is no exception. This is what Duke had to say about the US.

What is entering the public domain in the United States? Not a single published work. Once again, no published works are entering our public domain this year.2 (Happily, works published in 1923 will finally begin to enter our public domain next year.) The only works that are clearly in the US public domain now are those published before 1923. But what about works published after that date? Does that mean that they’re still under copyright? Well, maybe. Citizens of the United States have to live with a frustrating lack of clarity about what older works they can use. Did the author comply with registration or renewal requirements when those were mandatory?3 The records are fragmentary and confused, the copyright holders hard to find. Perhaps some post-1923 works by the authors above are in the public domain. Perhaps they are still copyrighted. We have to live in a fog of uncertainty, uncertainty that benefits no one. By contrast, in Canada and the EU, the public will know on January 1 that all works by these authors are in the public domain.

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