What Entered the Public Domain in 2013? Zip, Nada, Zilch!

2013whatcouldhavebeencollage2Last year, key works by James Joyce and Vir­ginia Woolf final­ly entered the pub­lic domain, at least in Europe. (Find them in our col­lec­tions of Free eBooks and Free Audio Books.) This year, we got pret­ty much bup­kis, espe­cial­ly if we’re talk­ing about the Unit­ed States. Over at the web­site run by The Cen­ter for the Study of the Pub­lic Domain at Duke Uni­ver­si­ty, they write:

What is enter­ing the pub­lic domain in the Unit­ed States? Noth­ing. Once again, we will have noth­ing to cel­e­brate this Jan­u­ary 1st. Not a sin­gle pub­lished work is enter­ing the pub­lic domain this year. Or next year. In fact, in the Unit­ed States, no pub­li­ca­tion will enter the pub­lic domain until 2019. Even more shock­ing­ly, the Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that Con­gress can take back works from the pub­lic domain. Could Shake­speare, Pla­to, or Mozart be pulled back into copy­right? The Supreme Court gave no rea­son to think that they could not be.

The Cen­ter then goes on to enu­mer­ate the works that would have entered the com­mons had we lived under the copy­right laws that pre­vailed until 1978. Under those laws, “thou­sands of works from 1956 would be enter­ing the pub­lic domain. They range from the films The Best Things in Life Are FreeAround the World in 80 DaysFor­bid­den Plan­et, and The Man Who Knew Too Much, to the Phillip K. Dick’s The Minor­i­ty Report and Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Jour­ney into Night, to sem­i­nal arti­cles on arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence.” Have a look at some of the oth­ers, sev­er­al of which appear in the mosa­ic above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lawrence Lessig’s Last Speech on Free Cul­ture. Watch it Online.

Lawrence Lessig Speaks Once Again About Copy­right and Cre­ativ­i­ty


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