Since 2019, every January 1st, the public domain frees more works that copyright laws kept locked up. On this glorious Public Domain Day, works created in 1930 and sound recordings from 1925 are made available to everyone in the United States, at least, to use as they wish. We are free to enjoy and share these works without paying anyone for them. We can create new works from these old works by remixing them or repurposing them to our heart’s content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This January 1st is special for Pirates because it is the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Swedish Pirate Party<\/a>. It is fitting that both events should occur on the same day and we wish the Swedish Pirates a happy 20th anniversary!<\/p>\n\n\n\n As a celebration for this year’s Public Domain Day, the Internet Archive has a contest to explore and reimagine the creative treasures entering the public domain<\/a>, especially works from 1930 that entered the public domain on January 1. Contestants must upload a 2-3 minute short film to the Internet Archive that uses at least one work published in 1930 that joined the public domain on January 1, 2026. This could be a poem, book, film, musical composition, painting, photograph or any other work that is now in the Public Domain. All submissions must be submitted by January 7, 2026 at 11:59pm PST. You can find more details on the contest at the Internet Archive<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As they do every year, Jennifer Jenkins and James Boyle of the Duke University Center for the Study of the Public Domain have a detailed, but brief list, of what new public domain works we have<\/a>. A number of characters are now in the public domain, including Betty Boop, Disney’s Rover (later renamed Pluto) and Blondie and Dagwood. Below is a short list with links to copies at the Internet Archive and elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Books<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Films<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Musical Compositions<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Sound Recordings<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n We’ll talk about Public Domain Day on the next Pirate News. See you then!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Image Credit: Public Domain<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Since 2019, every January 1st, the public domain frees more works that copyright laws kept locked up. On this glorious Public Domain Day,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9728,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,18,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-copyright","category-freedom-of-speech","category-slider"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/masspirates.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/TheLittleEngineThatCouldCover1930-scaled.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1W8mg-2wR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/masspirates.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/masspirates.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/masspirates.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masspirates.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masspirates.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9725"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/masspirates.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9725\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9737,"href":"https:\/\/masspirates.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9725\/revisions\/9737"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masspirates.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/masspirates.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masspirates.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masspirates.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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