https://standardebooks.org/blog/public-domain-day-2026
"Happy Public Domain Day!
Around the world, people celebrate Public Domain Day on January 1, the day in
which copyright expires on some older works and they enter the public domain in
many different countries.
In the U.S. Constitution, copyright terms were meant to be very limited in
order to “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.” The first copyright
act, written in 1790 by the founding fathers themselves, set the term to be up
to twenty-eight years.
But since then, powerful corporations have repeatedly extended the length of
copyright to promote not the progress of society, but their profit. The result
is that today in the U.S., work only enters the public domain ninety-five years
after publication—locking our culture away for
nearly a century.
2019 was the year in which new works were finally scheduled to enter the public
domain, ending this long, corporate-dictated cultural winter. And as that year
drew closer, it became clear that these corporations
wouldn’t try to extend
copyright yet again—making it the first year in almost a hundred years in which
a significant amount of art and literature once again entered the U.S. public
domain, free for anyone in the U.S. to read, use, share, remix, build upon, and
enjoy.
Ever since then, January 1 has been celebrated as Public Domain Day, the day in
which the next year’s crop of books, movies, music, and artwork graduates into
the public domain. At Standard Ebooks, we’ve prepared some of the year’s
biggest literary hits for you to read this January 1."
Via Christoph S.
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
