Happy New Year 2008! And now it is time to say hello to thousands, nay millions, of creative expressions that are now entering the Public Domain on our lovely little planet Earth and in its many countries. Indeed, today is Public Domain Day in most of the world, when copyright expires after a period running from the death of an author to 50 years, 70 years, or even more after that.
The vast majority of countries of the world use a general copyright term of life + 50 years, which term ended at least by midnight for any work whose author, or one of its several authors, had died by 1957.
These works, which enter the Public Domain as cultural property owned by us all, include artistic works and writings; travelogues and explorations; biographies and autobiographies; science and philosophy; cinema and theology; architecture and poetry—in short, products of the human mind in every medium and every form of endeavor.
The life+50 class of the newly-Public Domain includes works by American novelist Anne Parrish; British novelist Dorothy Richardson; Mexican artist Miguel Covarrubias; Romanian poet George Bacovia; Canadian-American geologist Reginald Aldworth Daly; American journalist, novelist, dramatist and poet Kenneth Lewis Roberts; Australian children’s author Gladys Lister; American landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr.; Irish-British mystery author Freeman Wills Crofts; American architect Julia Morgan; Swiss-Canadian geologist Carl Faessler; Canadian historian John Bartlet Brebner; Swiss artist Adolf Dietrich; American Prohibition agent Eliot Ness; Romanian-born sculptor Constantin Brancusi; American novelist and poet Christopher Morley; Italian author Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa; English theologian, priest, and crime writer Msgr Ronald Arbuthnott Knox; American geologist William H. Twenhofel; British lawyer and self-styled explorer Sir Randle F.W. Holme; Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral; British physician and medical historian John Joyce Keevil; American ethnomusicologist Frances Densmore; author and Esperantist James Denson Sayers; British biophysicist Rosalind Franklin; American artist Adaline Kent; British detective novelist Dorothy L. Sayers (aka “Mrs Fleming”); American author Peter B. Kyne; American Western novelist Eugene Cunningham; Ukrainian-born writer Mark Aleksandrovich Aldanov; Anglo-Irish fantasy writer Lord Dunsany; Greek novelist Nikos Kazantzakis (“Zorba the Greek”, “Last Temptation of Christ”); Irish artist Jack Butler Yeats; American explorer and aviator Richard Evelyn Byrd; American collector of Native American antiquities George Gustav Heye; British-born philatelist Bertram William Henry Poole; British architect and urban planner Sir (Leslie) Patrick Abercrombie; British journalist and author Helen Pearl Adam; Irish physician and poet Oliver St John Gogarty; Canadian geologist Joseph Burr Tyrrell; Danish artist Kay Nielsen; American journalist Burton Rascoe; Italian poet and novelist Umberto Poli (“Umberto Saba”); German film director Max Ophüls; Canadian Parliamentarian Martha Louise Black; American astronomer Mary Proctor; Finnish composer Jean Sibelius; Hungarian-American mathematician John Von Neumann; Austrian-born anthropologist Felix Bryk; English writer and poet Rose Fyleman; Austrian-American composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold; Austrian-American psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich; British “boys stories” novelist Frederick Sadleir Brereton; American political scientist and philosopher Arthur F Bentley; Australian archaeologist and historian Gordon Childe; Canadian political scientist and historian William Bennett Munro; German physicist Johannes Stark; American pulp sci-fi author Ray Cummings; American writer Edward Alexander Powell; German chemist Heinrich Wieland; British novelist and suffragette Rachel Ferguson; British classical scholar Cyril Bailey; Sultan Mahommed Shah, Aga Khan III; Canadian-born British author and artist Wyndham Lewis; Anglo-Indian historian H.G. Rawlinson; British musicologist Edward Dent; German novelist Alfred Döblin; Mexican artist Diego Rivera; British theologian Bishop Alfred Walter Frank Blunt; Anglo-South African professor and biographer John Peter Richard Wallis; British essayist and critic John Middleton Murry; British novelist and poet Malcolm Lowry; American physicist and chemist Irving Langmuir; “Campfire Girls” author Hildegard G. Frey; American author Laura Ingalls Wilder (“Little House on the Prairie”); English crime novelist Richard Goyne (aka “John Courage”); American novelist Stanley Vestal; British literary scholar Frederick Samuel Boas; Irish-Canadian military chaplain and archbishop Robert John Renison; Canadian boat designer and author William Albert Hickman; Polish-American novelist and dramatist Sholom Asch; American agronomist Richard Laban Adams; American artist Adam Emory Albright; American social worker and educator Edith Abbott; American athlete and author James Brendan Connolly; Austrian-American anthropologist Robert Harry Lowie; Norwegian geophysicist Harald Ulrik Sverdrup; American professor of Romance languages William Albert Nitze; British novelist Joyce Cary; Danish Arctic explorer Peter Freuchen; American astronomer Henry Norris Russell; American arts-and-crafts architect Bernard Maybeck; British statistician and economist Sir Arthur Lyon Bowley; Hungarian artist Béla Apáti Abkarovics; Belgian architect and designer Henri Van De Velde; American Senator Joseph McCarthy; American mystery author Georgianna Randolph Craig (aka “Craig Rice”); and many, many, more.
The second-largest bloc in the world copyright map, with about half the countries of the life+50 universe, is the life+70 universe, which includes much of Europe. This means that works by authors, or last-surviving authors, who died in 1937 are now public domain in the life+70 countries. Authors or other creators of “works” who died in 1937 include:
British writer and parliamentarian Walter Runciman; Canadian poet Michael Whelan; Russian novelist, playwright, and essayist Yevgeny Zamiatin; American orientalist Abraham Valentine Williams Jackson; British statesman and Nobel laureate Sir Austen Chamberlain; British politician Philip Snowden; American politician Newton D. Baker; Canadian librarian George Herbert Locke; British engineer and submarine cable developer Sir Charles Bright; New Zealand-born chemists and physicist Ernest Rutherford; American author and editor George Horace Lorimer; British artist and author Dion Clayton Calthrop; British Marxist writer and poet Christopher St John Sprigg (aka “Christopher Caudwell”); American author Ellis Parker Butler (“Pigs is Pigs”); American entomologist Vernon Lyman Kellogg; British banker and zoologist Lionel Walter de Rothschild; American essayist Rowland Gibson Hazard; American historian Charles Homer Haskins; American plant pathologist Jacob J. Taubenhaus; American entomologist William Morton Wheeler; British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald; British novelist Algernon Gissing; Canadian poet Beatrice Redpath; Czech statesman and founding President of Czechoslovakia Tomáš Masaryk; American novelist Lucy Fitch Perkins (the “Twins” series); American theologian Melancthon Williams Jacobus Jr.; American composer George Gershwin; British chemist Henry Edward Armstrong; French novelist Marguerite Audoux; British-born Canadian novelist and naturalist Julia Henshaw; German indologist Hermann Jacobi; German politician and military strategist Erich Ludendorff; British novelist Joseph Hocking; American poet Anna Hempstead Branch; British composer and letter-writer Algernon Bennet Langton Ashton; Bengali scientist and author Jagadis Chandra Bose; Scottish social welfare advocate and author Elizabeth Sanderson Haldane; American historian J. Franklin Jameson; Canadian poet and historian Rev. Arthur Wentworth Hamilton Eaton; American clergyman and Communist William Montgomery Brown; American geologist Thomas Nelson Dale; Belgian-British zoologist George Albert Boulenger; French author Jean de Brunhoff (“Babar”); British writer and second wife and biographer of Thomas Hardy, Florence Emily Dugdale; American politician James Norris Gillett; American novelist Florence Morse Kingsley; Irish politician and author Sir Dunbar Plunket Barton; British aviator and adventurer Baden Baden-Powell; British-born sculptor Rayner Hoff; British writer and editor Edward Garnett; American author and Mark Twain biographer Albert Bigelow Paine; American fantasy and science fiction writer H.P. Lovecraft; British poet and playwright John Drinkwater; American sculptor Henry Clews; hunter and adventurer Henry Anderson Bryden; American industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Mellon; American journalist and essayist Paul Elmer More; American conservationist and eugenicist Madison Grant; American author Frank H. Spearman; American writer and journalist Norman Hapgood; English jurist and legal historial Sir Frederick Pollock; Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi; American architect and botanist George Russell Shaw; British archaeologist Percy Gardner; Canadian journalist and parliamentarian Rodolphe Lemieux; British philosopher Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller; Canadian Prime Minister Sir Robert Laird Borden; American playwright William Hooker Gillette; American statesman and Nobel laureate Elihu Root; Aviator Amelia Earhart (or did she?); American engineer Lewis Muhlenberg Haupt; British writer Mary Frances Butts; American politician and author Rear Admiral Richmond Pearson Hobson; Maltese journalist and political figure Sir Augustus Bartolo; American ethnologist John Napoleon Brinton Hewitt; British clergyman and missionary Bishop Henry Hanlon; Irish writer and publisher Edmund Downey; Dutch physician and gynaecologist Theodoor Hendrik van de Velde; Scottish novelist and dramatist J.M. Barrie (“Peter Pan”); British veterinarian Orlando Charnock Bradley; British dramatist Idwal Jones; American inventor Frederick Eugene Ives; American historian and anthropologist Henry Sale Halbert; French composer Maurice Ravel; Boer War veteran Robert Valentine Dolbey; Canadian clergyman and novelist Charles William Gordon (aka “Ralph Connor”); American conservationist and poet William Temple Hornaday; British educator and musicologist Sir William Henry Hadow; French philosopher and historian Élie Halévy; British writer Thomas H Gladstone; British brigadier-general Herbert Augustus Iggulden; American industrialist and philanthropist John Davison Rockefeller; Uruguayan poet and dramatist Horacio Quiroga; British lichenologist Annie Lorrain Smith; American politician Milford W Howard; American politician and statesman Frank B. Kellogg; American journalist and author Don Marquis (“Archy and Mehitabel”); Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler; American novelist Edith Wharton; and many, many, many more.
Furthermore, unpublished works in the United States belonging to authors of the life+70 category are also in the public domain today, along with the published works belonging to the same authors if the latter were published prior to 1923. Published works by the aforementioned category of authors that were published after 1922 might be copyrighted in the United States.
This does not apply to Canada and the United Kingdom where the reverse holds true. In Canada, the published works of authors who have been deceased for at least 50 years are public domain works (as opposed to being published more than 70 years ago in the U.K.). Unpublished works like letters and papers written by authors deceased for less than 50 years after 1949 are copyrighted material in Canada, and all unpublished works by any author from the U.K. are copyrighted regardless of how many years have passed since his death. Thus, an anomalous set of copyrighted unpublished works from either country will become part of the British Public Domain Day on January 1, 2039, or January 1, 2049, respectively.
In contrast to the US, however, decades must pass before there will be any more privately-held documents entering into the public domain in Canada; or indeed any at all into the British public domain (and, in fairness, even documents that cast light on the histories of Canada and its former colonies, too). Meanwhile, the corpus of unpublished material entering into the public domain in the US is continually expanding, conferring an increasingly significant advantage upon scholarship and scholarly publication within the US and leading to an ever-growing “scholarship gap.”
For instance, whereas in Canada, in the absence of legal change, the published works of historical individuals like Joseph Burr Tyrrell and Martha Lousie Black, whose works already belong to the public domain as things stand, will be protected for over forty more years.
The problem in Canada is compounded even further in that, at minimum, some of the unpublished papers written by individuals like Tyrrel might be protected by Crown copyright. Unlike the U.K., where the absurd notion of perpetual copyright has been abolished, Crown copyright on unpublished government documents endures in perpetuity in Canada. That being the case, although works in the public domain by Tyrrel published in the name of the Crown were entered into the Canadian public domain many years ago, the published works of Tyrrel’s which did not have Crown copyright expire into the public domain only today. But more important, Tyrrel’s unpublished private papers are only entered into the public domain on January 1, 2049, and until Parliament acts, Tyrrel’s unpublished papers which receive Crown copyright protection will never, ever be released from copyright protection.
Alas for all those who would attempt to compile a complete collection of the materials prepared by Tyrrell about his exploration of western Canada starting in the 1880s!
Also passing into the public domain today is any anonymous or pseudonymous material published in 1957, or whatever other date applicable in your jurisdiction based upon your country’s copyright term.
Finally, Crown copyright expires today for Crown works published in 1957 in the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, Crown works published in 1982 (!) or created but not published in 1907 in New Zealand, and works created but not published in 1882 in the United Kingdom. Uniquely, Her Majesty the Queen in right of the United Kingdom no longer can exercise copyright in an unpublished document from 1882 that might be helpful in understanding Canadian or Australian history… while at the same time, that very document remains copyrighted as of today in Canada or Australia under Her Majesty the Queen in right of Canada or Australia!
Canadian Heritage – did you forget what the H-word means? – are you listening?
But let us now pause and congratulate the public domain for its victories today, in Canada and around the globe. This is your history, your cultural heritage, your public domain. Celebrate it, promote it and make use of it – before we lose it forever.
Happy Public Domain Day 2008!