Public Domain Day 2009

It is January 1st, which means that this morning at midnight a batch more "life-plus" copyrights expired in those countries — most of them — where copyright expires at the end of the Nth year following the death of the author.

Yes, folks, it's Public Domain Day! And it's international! There are little Public Domain Day virtual commemorations going on in places like Poland and Switzerland. Spread the word!

In the life+50 universe, which constitute the largest cohort of countries, including Canada, which collectively have the majority of the world's population, life-plus copyrights expired at midnight for those authors, or last-surviving of multiple authors, who died in 1958. Some notable life+50 entries into the public domain include life+50 copyrights for authors such as:

Australian politician (and sheep breeder) James Guthrie ("A world history of sheep and wool")
American film composer Edward H. Plumb ("Bambi" and many other Disney films)
American hymnist George Bennard ("The Old Rugged Cross")
British painter and illustrator Lucy Kemp-Welch (the original edition of "Black Beauty")
American screenwriter Jack Henley ("Bonzo Goes to College")
American writer J. P. McEvoy ("Dixie Dugan")
American author Betty MacDonald ("Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle")
British poet Robert Service ("The Cremation of Sam McGee", etc.)
English poet Alfred Noyes ("The Highwayman")
English music scholar Percy Scholes ("The Oxford Companion to Music")
American artist and author Marjorie Flack ("The Story About Ping")
American writer Johnston McCulley (creator of "Zorro")
British aircraft manufacturer Alliott Verdon Roe (as in Avro, as in the Arrow)
Serbian geophysicist Milutin Milanković (early proponent of ice ages)
British author and translator Lionel Giles (translator of the most widely-published English edition of Sun-Tzu's "Art of War")
Romanian-British rabbi and scholar Shulem Moshkovitz (the Shotzer Rebbe)
American financial analyst John Moody (of Wall Street fame)

A more extensive, but nowhere near complete list is reproduced below. See also Wikipedia's list of deaths in 1958 and the New General Catalog of Old Books and Authors 1958 deaths page.

Across the pond in the European Union, some other non-EU countries, and certain other countries around the world, being the second-largest copyright universe where the general term is "life plus seventy", copyrights by sole authors, or the last-surviving of multiple authors, who died in 1938, expired today. 1938 was an especially bad year in Europe, where many literary, scientific, political, and religious creators fell victim to Nazi persecution and Stalinist purges.

Some of the more interesting members of the 1938 class of deceased authors include:

Danish bacteriologist Hans Christian Gram (of Gram staining fame)
British-Canadian author, conservationist, and literary fraud Archie Belaney (Grey Owl)
Latvian-born ethnologist and musicologist Abraham Zevi Idelsohn (to whom the lyrics to "Hava Nagila" are attributed)
American cartoonist E. C. Segar (creator of "Popeye")
American illustrator Johnny Gruelle (creator of "Raggedy Ann")
American lawyer Clarence Darrow (of "Scopes Monkey Trial" fame)
American songwriter James Thornton ("When You Were Sweet Sixteen", written in 1898)
Japanese martial artist Kano Jigoro (founder of judo)
American industrialist Harvey Samuel Firestone (of tire fame)

A more extensive, but again far from complete list is reproduced below. See also Wikipedia's list of deaths in 1938 and the New General Catalog of Old Books and Authors 1938 deaths page.

The 1938 death class of authors are also now entering the public domain in the United States in respect of their unpublished works, which means that hundreds of thousands of archival documents are now out of copyright. In Canada, unfortunately, it is only published works and other works to which the general term of copyright applies, which came into the public domain today. Unpublished written works by authors who died in 1958 are still copyrighted in Canada, even though their published works now are not. Thanks to the ludicrously long Canadian "transitional period" for such copyrights, which started counting down ten years ago, not a single additional unpublished archival document will enter the public domain in Canada for another forty years, meaning that some documents from the mid-19^th century will remain copyrighted in Canada for nearly two centuries after their creation.

But in any event, the public domain advanced a little last night — even if it was delayed by a leap second. The collective culture of the world has been enriched. And not just in the traditional fields that are associated with copyright, such as music, literature, and art, but all areas of human endeavour: sciences and humanities, religion, mathematics, law, politics, journalism, medicine, translation, linguistics, drama, history, and scholarship in every field.

It's your public domain, your common cultural heritage, and your right to use. Happy Public Domain Day 2009!

http://www.xanga.com/publicdomain/687985634/public-domain-day-2009.html