January 1 is an important holiday. No, I'm not talking about New Year's Day. There is another holiday that happens on the same day – Public Domain Day. This the day on which works whose copyrights have just timed out become part of the public domain. If it's a book, that means you can do with it as you please. You can make copies of it, publish a new edition, even sell your copies or new edition and you won't owe anyone a dime. You will have to pay no royalties to the author or anyone else.
That means the authors have received their last royalty checks, but don't feel sad for them. It is doubtful any such authors are still alive. Copyrights, originally limited to 14 years with a possible 14-year extension, have had their time limit raised several times over the years. Most recently, in 1999, the term for books published before 1977 was raised from 75 to 95 years. Unless someone wrote and published a book before the age of 5, they must be over 100 years old now. If they were 20 at the time, they would have to be 115. It's safe to say virtually no author was still being protected, though someone else that purchased or inherited the copyright is now out of luck. However, copyrights were meant to encourage writing by protecting the author, not the descendants.
The increase in the copyright term by 20 years from 75 to 95 years passed in 1999 meant no new books would enter the public domain for 20 years. In 2019, they started becoming public again, and with the term up to an already ridiculous 95 years, Congress did not try to increase it again. So since then, a new group of books have become public on January 1 of every year. This year, it is books that were first published in 1929. I would like to say it was a very good year, and there were some good books published then, but it's hard to think of 1929 as a good year with that Depression thing. It was a momentous year, and it led to economic collapse, widespread hardship and losses, and finally a terrible war. It was a horrible year, but it started bright and hopeful, and gave us some literature that is still read today, 95 years later.
Here are a few of the books that have been set free today. Copy at will.
1. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway.
2. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner.
3. Look Homeward Angel by Thomas Wolfe.
4. Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke.
5. Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett.
6. Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves.
7. Laughing Boy by Oliver La Farge.
8. Cup of Gold by John Steinbeck.
9. A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf.
10. The Seven Dials Mystery by Agatha Christie.
11. Letters from a Father to His Daughter by Jawaharlal Nehru [to Indira Gandhi].
12. The Secret of the Caves (The Hardy Boys #7) by Franklin W. Dixon.
13. Les Enfants Terrible by Jean Cockteau.
14. Introduction to Metaphysics by Martin Heidegger.
15. Passing by Nella Larsen.
Books aren't the only things becoming free of their copyrights this year. There will be free music too: Singin' in the Rain, Bolero, Tiptoe through the Tulips, Ain't Misbehavin', Happy Days are Here Again, An American in Paris, and Waiting for a Train (Jimmie Rodgers).
Recordings, however, are protected for 100 years, so the free recorded music must be 100 years old. From 1924 there is Rhapsody in Blue (George Gershwin), Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen (Marian Anderson), It Had to Be You (Marion Harris), Everybody Loves My Baby, But My Baby Don't Love Me (Louis Armstrong), and California Here I Come (Al Jolson).
Some films have seen their copyrights expire, including The Cocoanuts (the first Marx Bros. film), Show Boat, and some more Mickey Mouse films, after the first Mickey movie, Steamboat Willie, was freed last year. A couple of characters will also become free, meaning you can use them in your books or cartoons now - Popeye and France's Tintin.
