By Jack Stroud
On Jan. 1, 2019, all books, movies, photos and songs originally published in the United States in 1923 entered the public domain. On Jan. 1, 2020, the same will happen to works published in 1924, and so on. For this reason, January 1 is dubbed Public Domain Day.
In 1998, the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act (derisively referred to as the “Mickey Mouse Act”) added twenty years of copyright protection to all works created or published in the United States. The last Public Domain Day happened was January 1, 1998, when all works from 1922 were freed of their copyright restrictions.
The public domain has no central database. The public domain is a concept; when a work is no longer subject to copyright protection, it is in the public domain. Using a Creative Commons license, artists and content creators of all kinds can enter their work into the public domain long before their copyright would expire.
Copyright laws are super complicated — with enough legal jargon to dissuade anyone from fully understanding them. But basically, by default, anything you make — a photo taken on your iPhone or a stick figure drawing — receives the protection established by the Copyright Act of 1976 and the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act of 1998.
The duration of protection those acts provide works like this:
- Works created from 1978 onwards receive copyright protection for the life of the author plus 70 years.
- Works created anonymously, under a pseudonym, or by a corporation receive 95 years of protection from the date of publication or 120 years of protection from the date of creation, whichever comes first.
- Works created between 1964 and 1977 receive 95 years of protection (28 years plus an automatic renewal of 67 years).
- Works created prior to 1964 receive 28 years of protection, with the option of a 67 year renewal.
So, in actuality, many works from 1923 were already in the public domain prior to New Years because the creators did not renew their copyright protection. Unfortunately, just because a work has entered the public domain does not mean that it is readily accessible.
Unnecessarily long copyright laws lead to orphan works: What The Center For The Study of Public Domain at Duke describes as works that are, “presumably under copyright, but the copyright owner cannot be identified or located.” Archivists tend to steer clear of digitizing or even restoring orphan works; fearing they could face legal recourse. Duke University suspects that the majority of our 20th century cultural heritage consists of orphan works. James Boyle, Professor at Duke University tweeted that “We are the first generation to deny our own culture to ourselves.”
In spite of these unfortunate facts, we can still celebrate the tens of thousands of works that entered the public domain this year. This is significant. It means that tens of thousands more works are now available for artists to repurpose. As the critic Northrop Frye once said, “Poetry can only be made out of other poems, novels out of other novels.” It means that archivists and librarians can legally do their job and preserve history for progeny. It means more transparency in our legal system, and more affordable education for students when they can access free books online. It means that we can publish this edited photo of 1923 advertisements and photos from Washington (see below).
More and more artists are licensing their works under Creative Commons, a set of licenses that enables lawful collaboration. The most restrictive license within CC is called CC BY-NC-ND, which means that others can download the work and share it with others as long as they credit the author. The least restrictive license is called CC0, which means that the work can be tweaked, remade or even used commercially, without giving credit to the author–it means the work is in the public domain.
The Creative Commons prevents the phenomena of orphan works, it creates a shared culture. Mary Rasenberger, executive director of the Authors guild observes that, “There comes a point when a creative work belongs to history as much as to its author and her heirs.” In the spirit of free information, this photo, designed by Penelope Layne Jones and William Elgin Seymour (we didn’t have to tell you that), is licensed as a CC0. Do with it what you will.
For readers interested in works entering the public domain, it will be helpful to reiterate that the public domain is not centralized. Documents in the public domain can be accessed online through sites operated by The Internet Archive, The Library of Congress, Hathi Trust, etc. The Copyright Act of 1976 dictates that government records (with considerable acceptions) are to go into the public domain, so your city hall has records in the public domain as well. It’s not always easy to find exactly what you’re looking for, but the search is the fun part anyway.
