What Could Have Entered the Public Domain on January 1, 2014?

Centre for the Study of the Public Domain  

Under the law that existed until 1978 . . . Works from 1957       

The books On the Road, Atlas Shrugged, and The Cat in the Hat, the films The Bridge on the River Kwai, Funny Face, and The Prince and the Showgirl, the play Endgame (“Fin de Partie”), and more. . .

Congress Shrugged

Current US law extends copyright for 70 years after the date of the author’s death, and corporate “works-for-hire” are copyrighted for 95 years after publication. But prior to the 1976 Copyright Act (which became effective in 1978), the maximum copyright term was 56 years – an initial term of 28 years, renewable for another 28 years. Under those laws, works published in 1957 would enter the public domain on January 1, 2014, where they would be “free as the air to common use.” (Mouse over any of the links below to see gorgeous cover art from 1957.) Under current copyright law, we’ll have to wait until 2053.¹ And no published works will enter our public domain until 2019. The laws in Canada and the EU are different – thousands of works are entering their public domains on January 1.

Curious George Gets a Term Extension

What books and plays would be entering the public domain if we had the pre-1978 copyright laws? You might recognize some of the titles below.

• Samuel Beckett, Endgame (“Fin de partie”, the original French version)
• Jack Kerouac, On the Road (completed 1951, published 1957)
• Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
• Margret Rey and H.A. Rey, Curious George Gets a Medal
• Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel), How the Grinch Stole Christmas and The Cat in the Hat
• Eliot Ness and Oscar Fraley, The Untouchables
• Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays
• Walter Lord, Day of Infamy
• Studs Terkel, Giants of Jazz
• Corbett H. Thigpen and Hervey M. Cleckley, The Three Faces of Eve
• Ian Fleming, From Russia, with Love
• Ann Weldy (as Ann Bannon), Odd Girl Out
• A.E. Van Vogt, Empire of the Atom

You would be free to translate these books into other languages, create Braille or audio versions for visually impaired readers (if you think that publishers wouldn’t object to this, you would be wrong), or adapt them for film. You could read them online or buy cheaper print editions, because others were free to republish them. (Empirical studies have shown that public domain books are less expensive, available in more editions and formats, and more likely to be in print – see here, here, and here.) Imagine a digital Library of Alexandria containing all of the world’s books from 1957 and earlier, where, thanks to technology, you can search, link, index, annotate, copy and paste. (Google Books has brought us closer to this reality, but for copyrighted books where there is no separate agreement with the copyright holder, it only shows three short snippets, not the whole book.) Instead of seeing these literary works enter the public domain in 2014, we will have to wait until 2053.
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