Freed From Copyright, These Classic Works Are Yours To Adapt; NPR, January 5, 2019

Milton Guevara, NPR; Freed From Copyright, These Classic Works Are Yours To Adapt

""Copyright has been overextended so many times, largely at the behest of major copyright holders," says author Naomi Novik. "Even though what that actually does is inhibit people from creating new works and sharing these older works." Novik is a founding member of the Organization for Transformative Works, a nonprofit that focuses on preserving fan fiction and art — that is, work created by fans, based on characters and worlds from their favorite written works, film, and TV, which can occasionally come into conflict with copyright law.

"For a character to live, that character has to belong to the audience," says Novik. "Works of art are meant to nourish our collective understanding; they're meant to nourish our conversation." 

Duke Law's entire list of works that entered the public domain this year can be found here."

'The drought is over': mass US copyright expiry brings flood of works into public domain; The Guardian, January 2, 2019

Alison Flood, The Guardian;

'The drought is over': mass US copyright expiry brings flood of works into public domain

 

"“The drought is over,” proclaims Duke Law School’s Center for the Public Domain, highlighting some of the works which are now available royalty-free, by authors from Edgar Rice Burroughs to Kahlil Gibran, PG Wodehouse to DH Lawrence, Edith Wharton to EE Cummings. It’s not only books: copyright in the US is also expiring on a host of films, paintings and music.

 

“The public domain has been frozen in time for 20 years, and we’re reaching the 20-year thaw,” the center’s director Jennifer Jenkins told the Smithsonian. The magazine predicted that the release’s impact on culture and creativity could be huge, because “we have never seen such a mass entry into the public domain in the digital age”. Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, told the Smithsonian: “We have shortchanged a generation. The 20th century is largely missing from the internet.”"