We are books originally copyrighted in 1923. We could have entered the public domain in 1998, but the Sonny Bono ('Copyright Term Extension') Act locked us away behind a wall of copyright restriction for an additional 20 years. On January 1, 2019, this copyright extension expired on a whole group of works, and so we finally entered the public domain. Above you will find a wide sampling from Carlson Library's shelves that fall into this group. Why don't you check us out? Get some ideas from the graphic on this page! →
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As the Washington Post explained in 2013,
“Without the term extension, works published between 1922 and 1941 would have fallen into the public domain between 1978 and 1997.”
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“Copyrighted works from the 1920s were scheduled to begin falling into the public domain again in 1998, and copyright interests wanted Congress to stop that from happening.”
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“That means that the 1976 and 1998 extensions have deprived a generation of readers of easy access to books from the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s and 1950s.”
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On January 1, 2020, long-forgotten books copyrighted in 1924 are scheduled to enter the public domain. And so on . . .
