In much of the world, copyright ends 50 years after the creator’s death, in some of the rest of the world, it ends 70 years after the creator’s death; in the USA, things have stopped going into the public domain until 2019 (unless America decides to retroactively extend copyright…again!).
But if you’re not in America, here’s a partial list of the creators whose works you’re getting, depending on whether you’re in a +50 or +70 territory: André Breton; Buster Keaton; László Moholy-Nagy; Gertrude Stein; H. G. Wells; Frank O’Hara; Alfred Stieglitz; Evelyn Waugh; D. T. Suzuki; Paul Nash; Mina Loy; Walt Disney; Lenny Bruce; WC Fields; CS Forester; and Pauline Boty.
To learn more about Public Domain Day visit publicdomainday.org. For more names whose works will be going into the public domain in 2017 see the Wikipedia pages on 1946 and 1966 deaths (which you can fine-tune down to writers and artists), and also this dedicated page.
Wondering what will enter the public domain through copyright expiration in the U.S.? Like last year, and the year before…Nothing (apart from unpublished works whose authors died in 1946).
Wondering if “bad things happen to works when they enter the public domain”? Wonder no more.
(Learn more about the situation in the U.S. and why the public domain is important in this article in Huff Post Books and this from the Duke Law School’s Centre for the Study of the Public Domain).
[Public Domain Review]