January 1st is a day of new beginnings. Not only is it New Year’s Day, but it is also Public Domain Day, a time when copyright protection on a particular work expires, and the work then enters the public domain. Once in the public domain, the work may be used by anyone for any purpose, without permission of the copyright owner, since there is no longer a copyright owner. As a result, "on each year's January 1st an impressive wealth of knowledge, information and beauty becomes freely available to humankind."
The length of copyright protection varies by country: currently, in the United States, it lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years after death, for works created after January 1, 1978. Most recently, on January 1, 2019, works from 1923 entered the public domain and are now free to use, including the film The Ten Commandments by Cecil B. DeMille and the book Tarzan and the Golden Lion by Edgar Rice Burroughs. (To determine when a particular work will enter the public domain in the U.S., there are numerous public domain calculators, such as the Public Domain Sherpa. ) In contrast, in other countries with the same time limits as the U.S., copyright protection lasts strictly for the life of the author plus 70 years after death,
In case you were wondering, copyright in the United States is protected by the U.S. Constitution in what is known as the “Patent and Copyright Clause,” i.e., Article I Section 8 Clause 8, to wit, “The Congress shall have power… To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” (See United States Constitution, Article 1, Section 8.) Copyright protections are given to authors, painters, composers, and creators in order to encourage them to write, paint, compose, and create. Once a book is written or a symphony composed or a painting completed, copyright law allows the author/composer/artist to reap all rewards (including monetary) from her/his creation. However, copyright terms expire after a set number of years to allow others to make use of a work. The work can then become a building block for new creations, new knowledge, and new artistic endeavours: “people can transform a poem into song lyrics, or make a movie based on a public domain novel.” And what sorts of works are copyrightable? According to the United States Copyright Office, “copyright…protects original works of authorship including literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works, such as poetry, novels, movies, songs, computer software, and architecture.”
This Public Domain Day (each year's January 1st) website is an initiative of COMMUNIA, the European Thematic Network on the Digital Public Domain, with the support of the Open Knowledge Foundation. For more information, two excellent websites are The Public Domain Review and Duke University's Center for the Study of the Public Domain.
