There is no explicit time when Public Domain Day began being observed (it was mentioned by
Lawrence Lessig in 2004 which also maintained the publicdomainday.org website.
2019 Public Domain Day in 2019 was significant in the United States as it was the first year to have any meaningful copyright expirations there since the event's establishment: a 20-year freeze had been imposed in 1998 with the passage of the Sonny Bono
Copyright Term Extension Act. Several activities were carried to celebrate the event, including a special section at the MIT Libraries for public domain works and the "Grand Re-Opening of the Public Domain" that took place at the Internet Archive with the presence of members of Creative Commons, the
Electronic Frontier Foundation and the
Wikimedia Foundation, among other scholars like
Pam Samuelson,
Lawrence Lessig and James Boyle.
2022 In 2022 in the United States, in addition to works published in 1926 that had had their copyright renewed, about 400,000 sound recordings from before 1923 also passed into the public domain under the
CLASSICS Act. The earliest iteration of
Winnie-the-Pooh became public domain.
2024 On 2024's Public Domain Day, all published works from 1928 entered the public domain. This included the animated short film
Steamboat Willie, featuring
Mickey Mouse, a subject of significant copyright interest. The inclusion of this work was a landmark event, ending years of controversies, although
Disney might still claim trademark rights on Mickey Mouse, with only Mickey's earliest appearances being public domain. Additionally, all sound recordings from 1923 entered into the public domain. No sound recordings had entered the public domain in 2023, as all pre-1923 recordings already entered into the public domain in 2022. However, recordings from 1923 to 1946 enter the public domain on January 1 of the year
after their 100th year after publication. Thus, a recording published in June 1923, for example, would have entered the public domain on January 1, 2024. The earliest versions of
Peter Pan became public domain in 2024. The relevant plays were published in 1928, despite the character having debuted in 1902.
2025 The earliest versions of
Popeye the Sailor Man and
Tintin became public domain figures. It was the first day that all songs, art, films and books from the
1920s were public domain in the United States, with the only exception being sound recordings.
2026 The earliest versions of
Betty Boop entered the public domain, as did the first four
Nancy Drew novels. It is also the first time since 1977 that a new decade of works, the 1930s, began to uniformly enter the public domain in the United States. ==See also==