Tags: Public Domain

January 1, 2023 was Public Domain Day, the day each year when copyrights expire and new works enter the public domain. The “Progress Clause” of the U.S. Constitution established the legal basis for federal copyright law, and it did so in order to encourage the progress of our society, to incentivize the creation of new works that would eventually enrich the public ​domain and be accessible to everyone. So each work entering the public domain is an example of...

January 1, 2022 was Public Domain Day, the day each year when copyrights expire and new works enter the public domain. The “Progress Clause” of the U.S. Constitution established the legal basis for federal copyright law, and it did so in order to encourage the progress of our society, to incentivize the creation of new works that would eventually enrich the public ​domain and be accessible to everyone. So each work entering the public domain is an example of...

January 1, 2021 was Public Domain day. On that historic date, many new titles entered the public domain, including works by literary luminaries that had all been copyrighted in 1925; that copyright has now expired. The works in question include F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Ernest Hemingway’s In Our Time, Franz Kafka’s The Trial, and Alain Locke's The New Negro, which features essays by Zora Neal Hurston...

#DGuknow that Tom Lehrer's lyrics are now all in the public domain? The songwriter Tom Lehrer recently posted on his website that "all the lyrics on this website, whether published or unpublished, copyrighted or uncopyrighted, may be downloaded and used in any manner. whatsoever, without requiring any further permission from me or payment to me or to anyone else." The Dramatists Guild supports a robust public domain, especially...