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Knowledge Base Article: KB4002 |
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| Topic: FAQ - Content-Related Questions, Genre, Style, Public Domain, and Soundalike Issues | |||
Title: New Public Domain Works as of January 2019 |
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| Last Reviewed: Jan 17, 2019 | |||
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New Public Domain Works as of January 2019 Referred to as “Public Domain Day,” New Year’s Day 2019 was a much-anticipated event in the world of copyrights. For the first time in more than two decades a massive amount of copyright protected material including books, films, and musical works entered the public domain, causing creatives to celebrate. Beginning in 1976, a series of extensions began to increase the length of copyright protection in the United States. Most notably, with the “Sonny Bono Copyright Act of 1998,” the duration was fixed at 95 years for works registered between 1923 and 1977. For works created after January 1, 1978, copyright duration is based on the life the author(s), lasting the life of the last surviving author plus 70 years. In the case of a work made for hire, copyright protection lasts for 95 years from publication or 120 years form the date of creation, whichever comes first. For anyone wanting to make a new recording or derivative work based on content created between 1923 and 1963 there has been a cloud of uncertainty regarding whether a given work was protected. Such protection depended upon timely registration renewals and other procedural requirements. It’s been estimated that 60 to 90 percent of works from this period may have already entered the public domain for failure to comply with these “formalities." Unfortunately, it is extremely hard to confirm the status of many of these works. One additional source of confusion for our composers is that copyright duration varies from country to country. Many countries long ago adopted a life of the author plus 50 years standard, meaning that a large number of works still under copyright protection in the United States may already be in the public domain in other countries. For these reasons, we continue to recommend that composers err on the side of caution and avoid creating tracks based on works for which the public domain status is uncertain. The good news for anyone seeking inspiration from older cultural gems is that large amounts of copyright protected material will continue to enter the public domain annually on January 1, for decades to come. Every New Year’s Day will bring a new release of works published 95 years earlier. This year, literally thousands of works from 1923 entered the public domain this year, far too many to list here. Among the notable musical compositions are “Yes! We Have No Bananas,” “Charleston,” “Who’s Sorry Now,” as well as some songs by Jelly Roll Morton and some compositions by Bela Bartok. For a more complete listing of works now in the public domain and other up-to-date information there’s a link in this article from The Center for the Study of Public Domain at Duke University Law: https://law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2019/ Another good source is The Internet Archive: https://archive.org/index.php NOTE: Only the underlying music and lyrics of musical compositions entering the public domain, not the sound recordings of those works. Such pre-1972 recordings may be protected under the Music Modernization Act of 2018. As such, we still recommend that you do not use uncleared samples of old recordings in your tracks. --- |
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