Every year, the copyrights on works expire and those works come into the public domain, which means that anyone can use them for performances or as material to produce new works -- of art, music, literature, or whatever. Modern copyright law gives quite a long time of protection: for most works, it's 95 years, so at the end of 2024, works from 1929 became available to the public domain. Disney has been a major force in pushing to make copyright protection that long, and protecting Mickey Mouse from being used by other artists is one of the main reasons. 2025 gives us 12 more Mickey Mouse movies to use, but you still can't use the Mickey from the 1980s or from The Sorcerer's Apprentice. And now, Popeye and Tintin have been added to the list of characters entering the public domain; you may now use early Popeye in your art.
Quite a few famous books have come into the public domain this year, including:
- William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
- Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
- Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own
- Dashiell Hammett, Red Harvest and The Maltese Falcon (as serialized in Black Mask magazine)
- John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold (Steinbeck's first novel)
- Agatha Christie, Seven Dials Mystery
- Robert Graves, Good-bye to All That
- E. B. White and James Thurber, Is Sex Necessary? Or, Why You Feel the Way You Do
Movies were huge in 1929 and had started to include sound, and there is some great stuff, including everyone's favorite, the Skeleton Dance!
- A dozen more Mickey Mouse animations (including Mickey’s first talking appearance in The Karnival Kid)
- The Cocoanuts (the first Marx Brothers feature film)
- The Broadway Melody (winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture)
- The Hollywood Revue of 1929, directed by Charles Reisner (featuring the song “Singin’ in the Rain”)
- The Skeleton Dance, directed by Walt Disney and animated by Ub Iwerks (the first Silly Symphony short from Disney)
- Blackmail, directed by Alfred Hitchcock (Hitchcock’s first sound film)
- Hallelujah, directed by King Vidor (one of the first films from a major studio with an all African-American cast)
- The Wild Party, directed by Dorothy Arzner (Clara Bow’s first “talkie”)
The copyright on sound recordings is a little longer, so we are now getting songs from 1924, including some well-known numbers like:
- Singin’ in the Rain
- Ain’t Misbehavin’
- An American in Paris
- Boléro
- Tiptoe Through the Tulips
- Happy Days Are Here Again
- Am I Blue?
- California Here I Come, as recorded by Al Jolson
Because of the importance of movies now coming into the public domain, the Internet Archive celebrated 2025 with a film contest, asking artists to submit short films constructed from public domain songs and films. The results are inspiring! The three top winners are so good that I'm including them here:
Take off for the moon and leave the world behind…
Do the Archive Boogie with old-timey dancers…
And watch Clara Bow in this Sapphic romance.
If you're interested in questions around public domain, copyright, and what's coming into play right now, here are some excellent and straightforward articles to read:
Internet Archive on Public Domain Day
March is Women's History Month and as always, the library has a number of great resources to help you learn more about how women have shaped history as well as the fight for equality. Drop by to see what we have on display. Remember all books on display are available for you to check out. We also have a curated collection and research guide in case you want to explore more online.