I’m always interested in the state of works in the public domain, especially as works in the U.S. have started entering said domain this year. So I was surprised, bordering on elated, to learn that the majority of books published in the U.S. before 1964 may actually be in the public domain: we don’t need to wait another 1-40 years!
Here’s a link to the change covered by Boing Boing as well as the actual posting they reference. I’ll update this post as I get more information.
Posted in Various and Sundry, Writing
2019 will bring many things, both planned and unplanned… but one of the planned events is one I had forgotten until people started circulating an article from the Smithsonian magazine by Glenn Fleishman: a mass of copyrights is expiring putting books, poems, music, films, and other art into the public domain.
This is very exciting, and not just because Jabberwocky Audio Theater will happily adapt 1920s sci-fi and adventure material as it did from H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, long in public domain. No, this means a lot of works which haven’t been distributed and shared widely can and will be, allowing countless people the opportunity to experience the art anew. As the one article says, it’ll be like a yearly time capsule.
In addition, NPR did a brief piece about the coming mass expiration and Lifehacker has a list of some of the more prominent works that will be in the public domain. I suppose “expiration” has a bit too negative connotation, so let’s call it an artistic explosion.
Now I have another reason to be excited for January 1st every year.
Copyright is always a topic of interest to writers and public domain in the United States is of added interest what with Congress’ tendency to extend copyright.
As it happens, a whole host of published works (films and books) are set to enter the public domain next year. Timothy Lee notes in an article for Ars Technica that, strangely, that might happen. (He also links to his excellent 2013 article on the same subject).