Works from 1926 enter the public domain after a 96-year extension.
Now that's it's 2022, updates to the United States public domain will take place, which sees new intellectual properties in the hands of the public.
Following the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, works from 1926 were given a 96-year extension. That extension expired January 1, 2022. Once the properties enter the public domain, they can legally be shared, performed, reused, repurposed, or sampled without permission or additional cost.
"Due to differing copyright laws around the world, there is no one single public domain – and here we focus on three of the most prominent," the Public Domain Review explains. "Newly entering the public domain in 2022 will be: works by people who died in 1951, for countries with a copyright term of "life plus 70 years" (e.g. UK, Russia, most of EU and South America); works by people who died in 1971, for countries with a term of "life plus 50 years" (e.g. Canada, New Zealand, and most of Africa and Asia); and works published in 1926 (and all pre-1923 sound recordings), for the United States."
Which intellectual properties, you may ask? There are some big names:
- A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh short story collection
- Felix Saten's Bambi, a Life in the Woods
- Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises
- Dorothy Parker's Enough Rope
- Langston Hughes' The Weary Blues
- T. E. Lawrence's The Seven Pillars of Wisdom
- Kahlil Gibran's Sand and Foam
- Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Aykroyd
- Edna Ferber's Showboat
- William Faulker's Soldier's Play
- Willa Cather's My Mortal Enemy
- D. H. Lawrence's The Plumed Serpent
- H. L. Mencken's Notes on Democracy
- 400,000 sound recordings from 1923
What do you think of the above properties being in the public domain? Share your thoughts in the comments below.