Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain: What Will Enter the US Public Domain on January 1, 2024?

Update 2

• HathiTrust Provides Access to Thousands of Titles That Have Just Entered the Public Domain

On January 1, titles published in 1928 entered the public domain in the United States, including more than 66,000 items in the HathiTrust collection. Global readers can access 46,829 of these titles.

Update 1

• Celebrate Public Domain Day 2024: Weird Tales From The Public Domain 

The celebration is scheduled For January 25, 2024. It’s co-sponsored by the Internet Archive, Creative Commons, Authors Alliance, Public Knowledge, Library Futures, SPARC and the Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain. Learn More.

—-End Update—-

The 2024 edition of the annual Public Domain Day roundup post from the Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain is now online. Here are a few highlights from the approx. 6600 word post.

From a Post by Jennifer Jenkins, Director, Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain:

On January 1, 2024, thousands of copyrighted works from 1928 will enter the US public domain, along with sound recordings from 1923. They will be free for all to copy, share, and build upon. This year’s highlights include Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence and The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht, Buster Keaton’s The Cameraman and Cole Porter’s Let’s Do It, and a trove of sound recordings from 1923. And, of course, 2024 marks the long-awaited arrival of Steamboat Willie – featuring Mickey and Minnie Mouse – into the public domain. That story is so fascinating, so rich in irony, so rife with misinformation about what you will be able to do with Mickey and Minnie now that they are in the public domain that it deserved its own article, “Mickey, Disney, and the Public Domain: a 95-year Love Triangle.” Why is it a love triangle? What rights does Disney still have? How is trademark law involved? Read all about it here.

Here is just a handful of the works that will be in the US public domain in 2024.[2]  They were first set to go into the public domain after a 56-year term in 1984, but a term extension pushed that date to 2004. They were then supposed to go into the public domain in 2004, after being copyrighted for 75 years. But before this could happen, Congress hit another 20-year pause button and extended their copyright term to 95 years.[3]  Now the wait is over. “To find more material from 1928, you can visit the Catalogue of Copyright Entries.”

Books and Plays

Here is just a handful of the works that will be in the US public domain in 2024.[2]  They were first set to go into the public domain after a 56-year term in 1984, but a term extension pushed that date to 2004. They were then supposed to go into the public domain in 2004, after being copyrighted for 75 years. But before this could happen, Congress hit another 20-year pause button and extended their copyright term to 95 years.[3]  Now the wait is over. “To find more material from 1928, you can visit the Catalogue of Copyright Entries.”

Books and Plays

• D.H Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover
• Bertolt Brecht, The Threepenny Opera (in the original German, Die Dreigroschenoper)
• Virginia Woolf, Orlando
• Erich Maria Remarque,All Quite on the Western Front(in the original German, Im Westen nichts Neues)
• W.E.B. Du Bois,Dark Princess
• Claude McKay,Home to Harlem
• A. A. Milne, illustrations by E. H. Shepard,House at Pooh Corner (introducing the Tigger character)
• J. M. Barrie,Peter Pan; or the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up(because it was not “published” for copyright purposes until 1928)[4]
• Radclyffe Hall,The Well of Loneliness
• Evelyn Waugh,Decline and Fall
• Agatha Christie,The Mystery of the Blue Train
• Wanda Gág,Millions of Cats(the oldest American picture book still in print)
• Robert Frost,West-Running Brook
• Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur,The Front Page

Films

• Steamboat Willie and Plane Crazy (the silent version; directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks) [5]
• The Cameraman(directed by Edward Sedgwick and Buster Keaton)
• Lights of New York(directed by Bryan Foy; billed as “the first ‘all-talking’ picture”)
• The Circus(directed by Charlie Chaplin)
• The Passion of Joan of Arc(directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer)
• The Singing Fool(directed by Lloyd Bacon; follow-up to The Jazz Singer)
• The Wedding March(directed by Erich von Stroheim)
• The Crowd(directed by King Vidor)
• The Last Command(directed by Josef von Sternberg; Emil Jannings won the first Academy Award for Best Actor)
• Street Angel(directed by Frank Borzage; Janet Gaynor won the first Academy Award for Best Actress)

Musical Compositions

• Animal Crackers(musical starring the Marx Brothers; book by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind and lyrics and music by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby)
• Mack the Knife(original German lyrics by Bertolt Brecht and music by Kurt Weill; from The Threepenny Opera)
• Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall in Love)(Cole Porter; from the musical Paris)
• Sonny Boy(George Gard DeSylva, Lew Brown & Ray Henderson; from the film The Singing Fool starring Al Jolson)
• Beau Koo Jack(lyrics by Walter Melrose and music by Alex Hill and Louis Armstrong)
• Pick Pocket Blues(Bessie Smith)

Sound Recordings from 1923

• Charleston(recorded by James P. Johnson)
• Yes! We Have No Bananas(recorded by Billy Jones; Furman and Nash; Eddie Cantor; Belle Baker; The Lanin Orchestra)
• Who’s Sorry Now(recorded by Lewis James; The Happy Six; the Original Memphis Five)
• Down Hearted Blues(recorded by Bessie Smith; Tennessee Ten)
• Lawdy, Lawdy Blues(recorded by Ida Cox)
• Southern Blues and Moonshine Blues (recorded by Ma Rainey)
• Dipper Mouth Bluesand Froggie More (recorded by King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, featuring Louis Armstrong)
• Bambalina(recorded by the Ray Miller Orchestra)
• Swingin’ Down the Lane (recorded by the Isham Jones Orchestra; The Shannon Four; The Columbians)

Read the Complete Post For More New Works Entering the Public Domain Along with Analysis and Background (about 6600 words)

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