The date is January 1st – when the cycle of the calendar repeats itself along with it, hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, of books, essays, photos, artworks, unpublished papers, and other forms of “works” that have been created by humans in various fields are released from the protection of copyright into the public domain.
Happy Public Domain Day 2007!
For most of the world, copyright protection exists during the lifetime of an author and fifty years after his death. For simplicity’s sake, most countries also stipulate that copyright ends at the end of that fiftieth year.
Accordingly, in the life+50 universe, this is Public Domain Day for works of sole authorship by such a diverse group of dead authors as Benjamin Apthorp Gould Fuller, American philosopher; Isham Jones, American musician and songwriter; Murray Fletcher Pratt, American historian and science fiction writer; Friedrich Panzer, German germanist; Ludwig Köhler, Swiss theologian and philologist; William Henry Davis “Alfalfa Bill” Murray, American politician; Ernst Fuhrmann, German author and photographer; Johannes Jørgensen, Danish poet and biographer; Ernest Joseph King, American naval officer; Wilfrid Bovey, Canadian educationist and writer; Haniel (Clark) Long, American poet and author; Agnes Maude Royden, British suffragette; Reginald John Campbell, British clergyman; William Edward Lunt, American historian; Carlos Ibarguren, Argentinian author and legal scholar; “Katherine Hale” (pseudonym of Amelia Beers Warnock Garvin), Canadian journalist and critic; Paul Bonatz, German architect; Mina Benson Hubbard, Canadian explorer; Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Fadeev, Russian novelist; James Edward Edmonds, British army officer and military historian; Pio Baroja, Spanish novelist; Albert Galloway Keller, American sociologist; Ernest Bilodeau, Canadian journalist and author; Joseph Wirth, Chancellor of Germany; Paul Rostock, German surgeon and Nazi-era official; H.L. Mencken, American journalist and author; Benjamin Platt Thomas, American historian and biographer; Julius (Judah David) Eisenstein, Russian -American author and hebraist; Walter Gieseking, French pianist and composer; Carl Brockelmann, German semitic scholar; Frigyes Riesz, Hungarian mathematician; Alphonse Désilets, Canadian agronomist and poet; Percy Marks, Australian novelist and scholar; Georges Simard, Canadian archivist and historian; Wilhelm Miklas, Austrian politician; Alben Barkley, Vice-President of the United States; Carl William Drepperd, American antiquarian; Sergei Petrovich Melgunov, historian; Derwent Stainthorpe Whittlesey, American geographer; Clive Bigham, Viscount of Mersey, British historian; Karel Polák, Czech historian and literary critic; Witold Hurewicz, Polish-born mathematician; Art Tatum, American jazz pianist; Walther Schoenichen, German biologist; Bernhard Joseph Stern, American sociologist; Oskar Kaufmann, Hungarian architect; F. Sherwood Taylor, British chemist and science historian; Marcel Griaule, French anthropologist and ethnologist; Austin McDowell Patterson, American chemist; Josef Hoffmann, Austrian architect and designer; Henry Wickham Steed, British historian, journalist and editor of The Times; Ernst Robert Curtius, German historian and archaeologist; John Webster Spargo, historian; Dan McCowan, Canadian naturalist and historian; Jaroslav Krejčí, Czechoslovakian legal academic, politician, and Nazi collaborator; Albert Prazák, Czechoslovakian political leader; Giovanni Papini, Italian essayist, poet and novelist; Gottfried Benn, German poet; Nina Hamnett, Welsh artist and writer; Georges Bouchard, Canadian essayist and historian; Hiram Bingham, American explorer and politician; Earl H. Morris, American anthropologist and archaeologist; Louis Bromfield, American writer; Paul Mantoux, French economic historian; Charles MacArthur, American playwright; Sarah Wambaugh, American historian and international affairs specialist; Rodolphe Girard, Canadian author and journalist; Bertolt Brecht, German playwright and poet; Léon Vallas, French musicologist; Burghard Breitner, Austrian surgeon, professor, and politician; Maurice Gagnon, Canadian art historian; C. Turner Joy, American naval officer; Lilian M. Beckwith Maxwell, Canadian author; Arnold D. Margolin, historian; Alexander Grechaninov, Russian composer; Gerald Finzi, British composer; Walter de la Mare, English poet, short story writer, and novelist; Tommy Dorsey, American musician; Louis Charles Karpinski, American mathematician and science historian; Edwin Corle, American writer; A. A. Milne, English author (”Winnie the Pooh”); Charles S. Johnson, American sociologist and academic; Christopher La Farge, American author, artist, and architect; Wayte Raymond, American numismatist; Maxine Kaufman, novelist; James G. Needham, American biologist and poet; Billy Bishop, Canadian WWI flying ace; E. T. Whittaker, British mathematician; Paul Carl Albert Rohrbach, German theologian, official and author; John A. Fleming, American geologist; Don Lorenzo Perosi, Italian composer; Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, Indian scholar and jurist; Louis Madelin, French historian; Nathan Van Patten, American librarian and bibliographer; Charles Kenneth Leith, American geologist; Frederick Webb Hodge, American anthropologist and archaeologist; Arundell Esdaile, British bibliographer; James Alexander Calder, Canadian politician; Chauncey McKinley Louttit, American psychologist; Samuel Alexander White, Canadian adventure novelist; Josep Puig i Cadafalch, Catalan architect; Percy MacKaye, American poet and playwright; Alexander Rodchenko, Russian artist, photographer, and sculptor; Elmer Drew Merrill, botanist; Clarence Augustus Chant, Canadian physicist and astronomer; Adamian Arshak, Armenian music and art researcher; Irène Joliot-Curie, French physicist; Norman Scott Brien Gras, Canadian-born economic historian; Sir Frank Brangwyn, British artist and illustrator; Lars Sonck, Finnish architect; Abbé Arthur Lacasse, Canadian poet; Risto Heikki Ryti, Finnish President; Rafael Karsten, Finnish religious scholar; Robert Mitchell Lindner, American psychoanalyst and skeptic; Charles Ryder Smith, British missionary and theologian; Mgr. Léonce Boivin, Canadian priest and historian; Ammon Monroe Aurand, American folklorist; Adolphe d’Espie de La Hire, French fantasy and science-fiction author; William Ferguson Tamblyn, Canadian professor of English literature; Lyonel Charles Feininger, German painter; Fr. Edmund Aloysius Walsh, American Jesuit priest and professor; Sir Travers Humphreys, British lawyer and jurist; Robert McAlmon, American poet and novelist; Ernest Richard Hughes, British sinologist; Paul Gadenne, French novelist; Eugene Willis Gudger, American ichthyologist and cetologist; Homer Stillé Cummings, American politician; Max Beerbohm, English theater critic; Julien Benda, French novelist and philosopher; Reinhold Glière, Russian composer; Dorothy Violet Wellesley, Duchess of Wellington, English socialite and author; Gustave Charpentier, French composer; Diedrich Hermann Westermann, German missionary and linguist; Lucien Paul Victor Febvre, French historian; Vere Brabazon Ponsonby, Earl of Bessborough, British politician and Governor-General of Canada; Sir Alexander Korda, Hungarian-born film director; Paul de Maleingreau, Belgian organist and composer; Maurice Lalonde, Canadian historian and politician; Émile Borel, French mathematician and politician; William Addison Dwiggins, American author, illustrator and designer; Jackson Pollock, American painter; Frederick Soddy, English chemist; Clarence E. Mulford, American adventure novelist (”Hopalong Cassidy”); Yrjö Henrik Toivonen, Finnish linguist; Arthur Leighton Guptill, American artist and illustrator; Cécile Lagacé, Canadian writer; Austin Osman Spare, English artist; George Sarton, Belgian- American science historian; Walter Sydney Adams, American astronomer; and Sheila Kaye-Smith, English novelist; to name just a few!
This is also the date on which works of joint or multiple authorship, whose last-surviving author died in 1956, come into the public domain in the life+50 universe. This is the case, for example, with the wonderful “Edible Wild Plants of Eastern North America”, published in 1943 by Merritt Lyndon Fernald (d. 1950) and Alfred Charles Kinsey (d. 1956).
(Yes, that Alfred Charles Kinsey!)
Most countries, and most inhabitants of this planet, are in the standard Berne copyright universe of life+50. However, this is also Public Domain Day in the quarter or so of the world where the copyright term has foolishly been extended to life+70.
In the life+70 universe, today marks the entry into the public domain of published works of sole or last-surviving authorship by British statistician Karl Pearson; German historian and polymath Oswald Spengler; British anthropologist Joseph Daniel Unwin; British surgeon and medical professor Sir Berkeley Moynihan; Australian novelist and war correspondent Alfred Arthur Greenwood Hales; American writer and novelist George Allan England; American author Edward Hagaman Hall; British historian Charles Sanford Terry; Alaska governor Scott C. Bone; American publisher William Webster Ellsworth; British historian Sir Richard Lodge; English poet and humorist Harry Graham; English writer and poet Edmond Gore Alexander Holmes; French historian and journalist Jacques Bainville; Scottish-Canadian journalist and archivist Alexander Fraser; French poet and historian Pierre de Nolhac; Russian composer Aleksandr Glazunov; Canadian poet Ruth Collie (pseud. “Wilhelmina Stitch”); American evangelist William Haven Daniels; American anthropologist Thomas Talbot Waterman; American writer Marie Van Vorst; German geophysicist and engineer Conrad Schlumberger; Canadian historian and archivist Arthur George Doughty; American legal scholar Thomas Adkins Street; British botanist Margaret Jane Benson; British author and popular historian Louise Creighton; Newfoundland Governor David Murray Anderson; Spanish author Joaquín Abati y Díaz; Austrian-Swedish physician Robert Bárány; American Vice-President Charles Curtis; Canadian journalist and historian Arthur Hugh Urquhart Colquhoun; American writer Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews; Canadian theologian George Coulson Workman; Scottish journalist and author Donald Alexander Mackenzie; German Egyptologist Alfred Wiedemann; Irish writer Justin Huntly Mccarthy; Scottish Physiologist John Scott Haldane; American writer Elizabeth Robins Pennell; spiritualist author Violet (Nee)Chambers Tweedale; British ghost story writer M. R. James; Icelandic electrical engineer Frímann Bjarnason Arngrímsson; American historian Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer; Australian journalist and politician George Mure Black; Italian composer Ottorino Respighi; British author John Collis Snaith; Canadian fisheries biologist Edward Ernest Prince; Canadian professor Edmund Kemper Broadus; Canadian legal scholar and politician John Augustus Barron; Canadian historian and antiquarian Gerald Ephraim Hart; French writer Juliette Adam; American novelist and women’s rights campaigner Mary Johnston; French economic historian Henri Eugène Sée; French historian Marc de Villiers du Terrage; American historian James Harvey Robinson; German philosopher Moritz Schlick; British author Lilian Julian Webb (pseud. “Cynthia Stockley”); New Zealand poet and journalist Arthur Henry Adams; Field Marshal Edmund Henry Hynman Allenby, 1st Viscount Allenby; English author G. K. Chesterton; American detective novelist Arthur B. Reeve; English scholar and poet A.E. Housman; pioneering American “muckraker” journalist Lincoln Steffens; British surgeon Sir Charles Alfred Ballance; Spanish dramatist and novelist Ramón del Valle-Inclán; British military officer Edmund Henry Hynman, Viscount Allenby; American legal scholar and politician James Montgomery Beck; British author Rudyard Kipling; American diplomat Charles Hitchcock Sherrill; Russian author Maxim Gorky; Prince Edward Island Premier Walter Maxfield Lea; British novelist and playwright Emily Morse Symonds; British novelist and suffragette Beatrice Harraden; Canadian historian Charles Napier Bell; Spanish poet and dramatist Federico García Lorca; Irish physicist Alexander Anderson; American politician and author William Hope Harvey; Victoria state Premier John Allan; German-born mathematician Stefan Cohn-Vossen; French musicologist and composer Julien Tiersot; Russian medical scientist Ivan Pavlov; French poet and critic Gustave Kahn; British writer Effie (Adelaide) Maria Albanesi; Spanish author and philosopher Miguel de Unamuno; Dutch poet and novelist Jan Jacob Slauerhoff; Italian novelist and dramatist Luigi Pirandello; Scottish author and nationalist politician R.B. Cunninghame Graham; British economist and journalist Harold Cox; Indian author Dhan Gopal Mukerji; “Father of Indian Co-operation” Sir Frederick Augustus Nicholson; Canadian historian and author Agnes Christina Laut; Joseph Conrad’s wife Jessie Conrad; Norwegian-American author and diplomat Rasmus B. Anderson; French poet and novelist Henri de Régnier; and Canadian historian and editor Thomas Guthrie Marquis; among many others.
This day is also known as Public Domain Day in the United States since according to the life+70 rule, works by those named above that died in 1936 will be in the public domain along with all other unpublished works belonging to members of the Class of ’36.
On this day, the oppressive hold of the dead hand of dead-letter copyright ends, and these individuals among others, will have their creative works freed from the grip of restrictive copyright legislation. It is now open season for today’s creative individuals and others to build upon the cultural heritage they created.
Three years ago on this day, the copyright on millions of pages of documents from deceased authors before 1949 lapsed into public domain. This occurred following a much-delayed amendment in the Copyright Act of 1998, abolishing perpetual copyright on “unpublished works.”
Sadly, the next Archival Public Domain Day that can be celebrated in Canada will take place on January 1, 2049. This is because, as well as creating an overly long copyright duration for new works, the shortsighted Copyright Act amendments of 1998 ensured that the “works”, including historical documents, created by “authors” who died between 1949 and 1998 would retain their copyrighted status until the enactment of the amendment. As a result, the literary works from before 2049 produced by individuals who died between 1949 and 1998 will remain under copyright until then. This despite the fact that other literary material produced by the same people will pass into the public domain each year. Indeed, starting in 2020, the archival public domain in the United States will even surpass the Canadian one in scope as the former grows larger every year whereas the latter will be stagnant for almost five decades.
Consider these works: “Winged warfare : hunting the Huns in the air” by Billy Bishop; “Autour du lac Saint-Jean” by Ernest Bilodeau; “Our wonderful universe” by C.A. Chant; “A week on the Jupiter River, Anticosti Island” by The Earl of Bessborough; “Notes historiques sur Mont-Laurier, Nominingue et Kiamika” by Maurice Lalonde; “A Woman’s Way Through Unknown Labrador” by Mina Benson Hubbard. All six books have entered the Canadian public domain as of today.
But take, for example, March 15, 1939 letter from Billy Bishop to Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King; the archival holdings of Ernest Bilodeau; C.A. Chant’s notebooks relating to astronomy; Lord Bessborough’s correspondence and documents related to his service as Governor-General of Canada; political correspondence of Maurice Lalonde; and exploratory journals of Mina Benson Hubbard. These works will remain “protected” until at least 2055.
The “long-term goal” of Canadian Heritage of “clarification and simplification of the Act” appears to have been quietly abandoned. But if it comes up for reconsideration, there are few better candidates for clarification and simplification than the senseless differentiation between published and unpublished works.
Whereas the public domain in the published works is effectively locked up in the US for another twelve years, the unpublished works belonging to the “1936 class” of authors are public domain in the US now. By 2027, the unpublished works of those authors who died in 1956, as mentioned earlier, will become public domain in the US although they will remain protected by copyright laws in Canada for another 22 years. It will become easier from the legal viewpoint to refer to the documents on Canadian history from another country!
Unfortunately but even sadder, in the United Kingdom where millions of archival documents on Canada and other British colonies are kept, not a single document will be public domain irrespective of its age or date of death of the author (if he is known) until January 1, 2039.
However, we have gathered here to commemorate this small victory of the public domain. Let us enjoy the rollover of the new year and the chance to renew our culture and expand our knowledge in any field of human interests provided by the public domain.
Long live the public domain! Short live copyright laws! Happy Public Domain Day, 2007!