Upcoming Good Year for the Public Domain

First, I want to note that under our current copyright regime, both the totality of Shakespeare's works and Herman Melville's Moby Dick would be largely unknown. 

Next, you should look at Cory Doctorow's survey of what is entering the public domain this year.

To put it mildly, it ain't just Steam Boat Willie:

They stole something from you. For decades, they stole it. That thing they stole? Your entire culture. For all of human history, works created in living memory entered the public domain every year. 40 years ago, that stopped.

First in 1976, and then again in 1998, Congress retroactively extended copyright's duration by 20 years, for all works, including works whose authors were unknown and long dead, whose proper successors could not be located. Many of these authors were permanently erased from history as every known copy of their works disappeared before they could be brought back into our culture through reproduction, adaptation and re-use (copyright is "strict liability," meaning that even if you pay to clear the rights to a work from someone who has good reason to believe they control those rights, if they're wrong, you are on the hook as an infringer, and the statutory damages run to six figures).

 ………

But at least we'll get some music in the public domain again this year. Indeed, this year's public domain is shaping up to be an even bigger banger than 2023: 

And here is a list of the most prominent works entering the public domain from the above link:

Books and Plays

• D.H Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover
• Bertolt Brecht, The Threepenny Opera (in the original German, Die Dreigroschenoper)
• Virginia Woolf, Orlando
• Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front (in the original German, Im Westen nichts Neues)
• W.E.B. Du Bois, Dark Princess
• Claude McKay, Home to Harlem
• A. A. Milne, illustrations by E. H. Shepard, House at Pooh Corner (introducing the Tigger character)
• J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan; or the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up (because it was not "published" for copyright purposes until 1928)[4]
• Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness
• Evelyn Waugh,Decline and Fall
• Agatha Christie, The Mystery of the Blue Train
• Wanda Gág, Millions of Cats (the oldest American picture book still in print)
• Robert Frost, West-Running Brook
• Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, The Front Page

Films

• D.H Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover
• Bertolt Brecht, The Threepenny Opera (in the original German, Die Dreigroschenoper)
• Virginia Woolf, Orlando
• Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front (in the original German, Im Westen nichts Neues)
• W.E.B. Du Bois, Dark Princess
• Claude McKay, Home to Harlem
• A. A. Milne, illustrations by E. H. Shepard, House at Pooh Corner (introducing the Tigger character)
• J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan; or the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up (because it was not "published" for copyright purposes until 1928)[4]
• Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness
• Evelyn Waugh,Decline and Fall
• Agatha Christie, The Mystery of the Blue Train
• Wanda Gág, Millions of Cats (the oldest American picture book still in print)
• Robert Frost, West-Running Brook
• Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, The Front Page

 Musical Compositions

• Animal Crackers (musical starring the Marx Brothers; book by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind and lyrics and music by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby)
• Mack the Knife (original German lyrics by Bertolt Brecht and music by Kurt Weill; from The Threepenny Opera)
• Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall in Love) (Cole Porter; from the musical Paris)
• Sonny Boy (George Gard DeSylva, Lew Brown & Ray Henderson; from the film The Singing Fool starring Al Jolson)
• When You're Smiling (lyrics by Mark Fisher and Joe Goodwin and music by Larry Shay)
• Empty Bed Blues (J. C. Johnson)
• I Wanna Be Loved By You (lyrics by Bert Kalmar and music by Herbert Stothart and Harry Ruby; from the musical Good Boy)
• Makin’ Whoopee! (lyrics by Gus Khan and music by Walter Donaldson)
• You’re My Necessity, You’re The Cream in My Coffee (George Gard DeSylva, Lew Brown & Ray Henderson; from the musical Hold Everything!)
• I Can’t Give You Anything But Love, Baby (lyrics by Dorothy Fields and music by James Francis)
• Ramona (lyrics by L. Wolfe Gilbert and music by Mabel Wayne)
• There’s a Rainbow ‘Round My Shoulder (Al Jolson, Billy Rose, Dave Dreyer; from the film The Singing Fool)
• Beau Koo Jack (lyrics by Walter Melrose and music by Alex Hill and Louis Armstrong)
• Pick Pocket Blues (Bessie Smith)

Sound Recordings:

• Charleston (recorded by James P. Johnson)
• Yes! We Have No Bananas (recorded by Billy Jones; Furman and Nash; Eddie Cantor; Belle Baker; The Lanin Orchestra)
• Who’s Sorry Now (recorded by Lewis James; The Happy Six; the Original Memphis Five)
• Down Hearted Blues (recorded by Bessie Smith; Tennessee Ten)
• Lawdy, Lawdy Blues (recorded by Ida Cox)
• Southern Blues and Moonshine Blues (recorded by Ma Rainey)
• Down South Blues (recorded by Hannah Sylvester; The Virginians)
• Wolverine Blues (recorded by the Benson Orchestra of Chicago)
• Tin Roof Blues (recorded by the New Orleans Rhythm Kings)
• That American Boy of Mine and Parade of the Wooden Soldiers (recorded by Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra)
• Dipper Mouth Blues and Froggie More (recorded by King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, featuring Louis Armstrong)
• Bambalina (recorded by the Ray Miller Orchestra)
• Swingin’ Down the Lane (recorded by the Isham Jones Orchestra; The Shannon Four; The Columbians)

This is a huge benefit for society.

Let me explain my comments about both Shakespeare and Melville, starting with Melville.

In 1851, Herman Melville published the novel Moby Dick, and it was a resounding critical and commercial failure, and remained out of the public eye.

In 1891, Melville died and Moby Dick was republished, again vanishing without a ripple.

Almost 30 years after his death, the novella Billy Budd, which was unfinished among his effects, creating a renaissance in his works, and Moby Dick was still available at that time, and critically reevaluated, and became the classic that almost everyone reads in high school today.

Under the current copyright regime, Moby Dick would have been caught in the layer of publication hell reserved for orphan works until 1951, by which time there might have been no more than a dozen copies extant.

And now onto Shakespeare:

William Shakespeare died in 1616 without heir, and his plays, generally considered to be low-brow entertainment, as all theater was at the time, were not published.

What remained were copies used by actors.

In 1623, these workes were assembled through the efforts of John Heminges and Henry Condel, members of Shakespeare's theater company, and published as the First Folio.

Under the current copyright statute, his works would not have entered the public domain for 100 years from the date of publication, which means that anyone with a memory of these this work, and more importantly anyone with a copy of his scripts, would have been dead.

The vast bulk of his work would have been lost for eternity, because ownership of the rights was unclear, and even if acting in good faith, anyone republishing could have been subject to hundreds of thousands of dollars in penalties, even though they had acted in the best of faith.

There is little to no money to be made for the rights holders publish, but there is ALWAYS enough in statutory penalties to support pursuing and suing anyone who wants to republish this.

So our cultural heritage is wiped out, because some people want those last few pennies.

F%$# that.