This weekend, on Public Domain Day, several iconic works will lose copyright and become public property. The list includes Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, the science fiction film Metropolis, Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, and the first full-length “talkie” film, The Jazz Singer.
Copyright protection generally lasts for the lifetime of the original author and about 70 years after his death. After this period, anyone can use the works for their own interpretations without prior permission. This usually happens on January 1, on a specially designated Public Domain Day. The situation was more complicated in the USA, where the Copyright Extension Act was in effect, effectively freezing the transition of works into the public domain until 2019.
In 2010, the works of Sigmund Freud, William Butler Yeats, Ford Madox Ford, and Arthur Rackham entered the public domain, and since 2011, the works of such authors as Isaac Babel, Walter Benjamin, John Bakken Tweedsmoor, Mykhailo Bulgham, Paul Klee, Selma Lagerlef and etc. In 2017 – Herbert Wells. The possibility has also sparked a boom in new interpretations of works such as The Great Gatsby, which entered the public domain in 2021.
The loss of copyright for the Holmes stories marks the end of a series of legal disputes over how copyright law affects the use of the character itself. Several of Doyle’s previous works have already gone into open access in 2019, leading to legal confusion over new detective stories, including the now-settled lawsuit against Netflix over Enola Holmes.
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Note that 2024 will also see the long-awaited public debut of Mickey Mouse.
Source: The Verge
