Today is Public Domain Day in the USA

For the first time in 20 years, [ETA: This is incorrect; see update below] new or rather old artistic works are falling out of copyright under US law. For several decades prior to 2003, copyright under US law lasted for 75 years or I believe the life of the author if that period was longer, though frankly I don’t remember and am too lazy to look it up.

Anyway, in 2003 Congress passed the Transfer Massively Valuable Intellectual Property Rights to the Disney Corporation Act, aka The Mickey Mouse Law, which extended that term to 95 years, so nothing has fallen out of copyright since then until today.

As of today, here are a few of the things that are suddenly in the public domain for the first time:

Books

• Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
• Arthur Conan Doyle, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes
• Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop
• Countee Cullen, Copper Sun
• A. A. Milne, Now We Are Six, illustrations by E. H. Shepard
• Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey
• Ernest Hemingway, Men Without Women (collection of short stories)
• William Faulkner, Mosquitoes
• Agatha Christie, The Big Four
• Edith Wharton, Twilight Sleep
• Herbert Asbury, The Gangs of New York (the original 1927 publication)
• Franklin W. Dixon (pseudonym), The Tower Treasure (the first Hardy Boys book)
• Hermann Hesse, Der Steppenwolf (in the original German)
• Franz Kafka, Amerika (in the original German)
• Marcel Proust, Le Temps retrouvé (the final installment of In Search of Lost Time, in the original French)

Motion Pictures:

• Metropolis (directed by Fritz Lang)
• The Jazz Singer (the first feature-length film with synchronized dialogue; directed by Alan Crosland)
• Wings (winner of the first Academy Award for outstanding picture; directed by William A. Wellman)
• Sunrise (directed by F.W. Murnau)
• The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (Alfred Hitchcock’s first thriller)
• The King of Kings (directed by Cecil B. DeMille)
• London After Midnight (now a lost film; directed by Tod Browning)
• The Way of All Flesh (now a lost film; directed by Victor Fleming)
• 7th Heaven (inspired the ending of the 2016 film La La Land; directed by Frank Borzage)
• The Kid Brother (starring Harold Lloyd; directed by Ted Wilde)
• The Battle of the Century (starring the comedy duo Laurel and Hardy; directed by Clyde Bruckman)
• Upstream (directed by John Ford)

Music:

• The Best Things in Life Are Free (George Gard De Sylva, Lew Brown, Ray Henderson; from the musical Good News)
• (I Scream You Scream, We All Scream for) Ice Cream (Howard Johnson, Billy Moll, Robert A. King)
• Puttin’ on the Ritz (Irving Berlin)
• Funny Face and ’S Wonderful (Ira and George Gershwin; from the musical Funny Face)
• Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man and Ol’ Man River (Oscar Hammerstein II, Jerome Kern; from the musical Show Boat)
• Back Water Blues, Preaching the Blues, Foolish Man Blues (Bessie Smith)
• Potato Head Blues, Gully Low Blues (Louis Armstrong)
• Rusty Pail Blues, Sloppy Water Blues, Soothin’ Syrup Stomp (Thomas Waller)
• Black and Tan Fantasy and East St. Louis Toodle-O (Bub Miley, Duke Ellington)
• Billy Goat Stomp, Hyena Stomp, Jungle Blues (Ferdinand Joseph Morton)
• My Blue Heaven (George Whiting, Walter Donaldson)
• Diane (Erno Rapee, Lew Pollack)
• Mississippi Mud (Harry Barris, James Cavanaugh)

Update: Friend of the blog Michael Hiltzik published an article Friday giving a more accurate summation of which works have fallen out of copyright over the past four years.