Jan 3, 2023

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Metropolis, and The Jazz Singer.

Every January 1, all 95-year-old copyrights expire and numerous works enter the public domain.

Being added to the public domain is a major problem for the creative community. For example, A.A. Milne's original "Winnie the Pooh" entered the public domain last year, and now a live-action "Winnie the Pooh" movie and a new animated prequel movie and series are being released.

It is important to note that films, books, and songs copyrighted in 1927 entered the public domain on January 1, but adaptations and sound recordings made after that date did not enter the public domain. Adaptations made after 1927 will continue to be protected until 95 years after their copyright is established. Thus, a new adaptation, remix, or extension of the property can only be based on the original 1927 work. In the above example, Disney's animated Winnie the Pooh is safely protected until 2061, 95 years after its first appearance in Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree."

Disney has long been one of the great users of the public domain, as well as one of the strongest advocates for the extension of copyright protection. The studio has been most notably successful in adapting public domain works such as Alice in Wonderland, Cinderella, The Jungle Book, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and The Snow Queen (reimagined as Anna and the Snow Queen).

The company also strongly and successfully lobbied for an extension of the copyright term in the U.S., which is now 95 years; in 2024, Mickey himself, or at least the version that debuted in 1928's "Steamboat Willie," will enter the public domain.

Several animated works entered the public domain this year, including Disney's Alice in Cartoonland, a selection of shorts from Oswald the Lucky Rabbit (likely related to Disney's release of a new Oswald short last month), over a dozen Max Fleischer Coco shorts (including a thrilling prediction of life in 1999 in the link below), numerous "Felix the Cat" titles, and portions of Paul Terry's "Aesop's Fables". (It is important to note that many of the films from 1927, including some of the above, were already in the public domain because the studios had not renewed their copyrights in 1955 as required by law at the time. On the flip side, elements of the reissued films, such as the music in the Coco cartoon below, are not in the public domain.)

The list of feature films that enter the public domain each year is an interesting look back at the history of filmmaking, with several absolute classics losing copyright protection in 2023. These include "Wings," which won the first ever Academy Award for Best Picture, Fritz Lang's sci-fi masterpiece "Metropolis," and Laurel and Hardy's "The Fight of the Century," about a pie fight for a pie. Also in the public domain is Al Jolson's "The Jazz Singer. This film was the first feature film to use synchronized dialogue and was the nail in the coffin of the silent film era.

Among the books currently in the public domain are Arthur Conan Doyle's final Sherlock Holmes novel, "The Case Files of Sherlock Holmes," Virginia Woolf's "To the Lighthouse," Willa Cather's "Death to the Archbishop," and William Faulkner's second novel "Mosquitoes The Mosquito."

Currently freely available musical compositions include "The Best Things in Life Are Free" from the musical Good News, Irving Berlin's "Puttin' on the Ritz," the jazz classic "Ice Cream (I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Ice Cream)" and other familiar standards.

A more detailed list of works newly entered the public domain can be found here.