I was going to write this post, but Richard from Otago did, and better than I could!  So I stole it. Anton.

Happy New Year to you all

1 January each year is not only New Year’s Day it’s also Public Domain Day. That is, because under NZ law copyright in a work exists until 31 December of the year 50 years after the author died, all works expiring in a given year become free for any kind of reuse on 1 Jan of the following year.

2019 is particularly significant because it is the first time in 20 years that any works created in the United States have entered the public domain. This is because the ‘Sony Bono’ extension Act in 1998 extended the copyright term for many works by 20 years. It is worth remembering that this is exactly what will happen to us in New Zealand if our copyright term is extended, as it was to be under the original TPP agreement.

The following blog post by Duke University is too technical for most but does list the most significant US works to be entering the public domain this year, including works by Wodehouse, Lawrence, Frost, Woolf, Christie, and others; films by Cecile B. DeMille, Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton; songs like ‘Yes, we have no bananas.’ https://law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2019/

This Wikipedia page attempts to list all the authors/artists whose work fell into the public domain on 1 January, with the list divided into life+50 and life+70 jurisdictions:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_in_public_domain

Many of the works listed on the Duke blog post will have been out of copyright already in NZ because our term is different but being out of copyright in the US makes it ‘safer’ to use them if you were to post them on the web.

Richard White, Copyright Office, University of Otago.