Happy Public Domain Day!

[Wallace J.McLean]

Once again the year rolls over, and a whole raft of old works fall into
the public domain as their copyrights expire. Our collective past
intellectual output moves from being "property" to being history, culture,
and heritage.

Last year on this day, millions of pages of archival documents, whose
authors had died before 1949, became public domain in Canada. This was the
result of long-overdue amendments to the Copyright Act in 1998, which
ended the perpetual copyright in unpublished "works."

Unfortunately, there will not be another archival Public Domain Day for
archivists, historians, genealogists, and others, to celebrate in Canada
until January 1, 2049. This is because the 1998 amendments also provided
that the "works", including historical documents, by "authors" who died
between 1949 and 1998 inclusive, would have a copyright term fixed neither
to the life of the author nor the creation of the work, but to the
coming-into-force of the amendment. Those unpublished literary works --
the raw material of history -- whose authors died between 1949 and 1998,
will not be public domain for nearly another half-century. This, even
though the published material by those same people will continue to become
public domain.

For example, the unpublished letters of William Lyon Mackenzie King (d.
1950) will be "protected" by copyright until 2049. However, his published
works became public domain four years ago today.

Similarly, a pamphlet by Agnes MacPhail (d. 1954), Convict or citizen? :
the urgent need for prison reform, is in the public domain as of today.
But her letters on this, or any subject, are not, and won't be for 45
years.

Isaac Pedlow's One hundred years of Presbyterianism in Renfrew County,
published in 1930, is, as of this morning, in the public domain. His
letters to Prime Minister Meighen, on the subject of railways, from the
early 1920s, are not, and won't be for 45 years.

Herbert Brown Ames' The city below the hill: a sociological study of a
portion of the city of Montreal, published in 1897, is, since you kissed
your sweetie at midnight, in the public domain. But his 1902 letter to Sir
Wilfrid Laurier, concerning a proposed subway for the city of Montreal, is
not, and won't be for 45 years.

You get the picture.

But on to better news! There is, after all, still a Public Domain Day to
celebrate in respect of published works. Are you wearing your party hats?
(New Years Eve paraphernalia may be recycled.)

In the life+50 copyright universe, which comprises most of the world's
countries, and the majority of the world's people, including Canada, we
will see the entry into the public domain of the published works of Soviet
historian Robert Vipper; Swiss Jungian psychologist Ernst Aeppli; British
Columbia author and educator Alice Ravenhill; historian Ferdinand
Schevill; Dutch composer Henri Zagwijn; French musician and composer
Léonce de Saint-Martin; Danish novellist Martin Andersen Nexø; American
botanist Albert Francis Blakeslee; German ethnologist, philologist and
historian Wilhelm Schmidt; Canadian economist Édouard Montpetit; American
novellist and poet Elsa Barker; Danish poet and writer Martin Anderson
Nex; American evangelist Frank Grenville Beardsley; Uruguayan poet Julio
J. Casal; Bishop of Oxford Kenneth Escott Kirk; "western" writer William
MacLeod Raine; American anthropologist Earnest Albert Hooton; Mexican
artist Frida Kahlo; German historian Otto Scheel; American poet Walter
Arensberg; Flemish artist Edgar Tytgat; British mathematician Alan Turing;
physicist Enrico Fermi; French composer Jean Roger-Ducasse; American
author ("Bobbsey Twins") Lilian Garis; Finnish writer and diplomat Hjalmar
Johan Fredrik Procopé; Serbian philosopher Branislav Petronijevic; French
historian and philosopher Henri Berr; American literary scholar Raymond
Dexter Havens; German composer Hermann W S Waltershausen; "crank
economist" E.C. Riegel; Canadian essayist and editor of Saturday Night B.
K. Sandwell; Swedist novelist and playwright Stig Dagerman; American
writer and social reformer Vida Dutton Scudder; Spanish poet and dramatist
Jacinto Benavente; Canadian poet, novelist and historian William Douw
Lighthall; German composer Walter Braunfels; French historian Edouard
Dolléans; American artist and alpinist Belmore Browne; Scottish-American
journalist and founder of Forbes magazine B. C. Forbes; English novelist
and poet Francis Brett Young; Austrian composer Oskar Straus; American
politician and writer Joseph P. Tumulty; American comic artist George
McManus; poet Hans Lodeizen; Canadian novellist and historian Mabel
Burkholder; English liturgical scholar and historian Francis C. Eeles;
Argentinian composer, journalist, and director Manuel Romero; Montreal
philanthropist and captain of industry Herbert Brown Ames; American
musician and writer Ernest F. Wagner; Indian author Kalki ; Tin Pan Alley
composer Arthur Brown; Brazilian poet and playwright Oswald de Andrade;
Canadian composer C. F. Thiele; English philosopher and scholar Clement
Charles Julian Webb; Canadian politician and Premier of Prince Edward
Island J. Walter Jones; German scholar and theologian Werner Elert;
American botanist David Fairchild; British politician John Allsebrook
Simon; German historian Friedrich Meinecke; American zoologist and
entomologist Herbert Osborn; British theologian Ernest Findlay Scott;
American mathematician Julian Lowell Coolidge; American mathematician
Leonard Eugene Dickson; Swedish novelist, essayist and poet Frans Gunnar
Bengtsson; Russian writer Michail M Prishvin; British sociologist Benjamin
Seebohm Rowntree; American ornithologist Arthur Cleveland Bent; American
author Onoto Watanna; English literary critic and Shakespearean scholar
Sir Edmund Kerchever Chambers; American urbanologist Frank Backus
Williams; British legal scholar Thomas Baty; composer Peter Van Anrooy;
Italian composer and pianist Franco Alfano; American composer Charles
Ives; Soviet-era Russian author Boris Leontevich Gorbatov; French novelist
Colette ; Armenian poet Arshag Tchobanian; Canadian composer Alfred
Lamoureux; French art historian Émile Mâle; Russian ethnographer and
linguist Dmitrii Konstantinovich Zelenin; Flemish historian Floris H.L.
Prims; French photographer Claude Cahun; English clergyman and social
critic William Ralph Inge; American feminist and politician Emmeline
Pethick-Lawrence; Canadian composer Jean-Robert Talbot; American botanist
and horticulturalist Liberty Hyde Bailey; American novelist and travel
writer Alpheus Hyatt Verrill; American novelist Joseph Hergesheimer;
American songwriter J. Rosamond Johnson; art historian John Kalf; British
linguist and lexicographer Ernest Weekley; French artist Henri Matisse;
Czech musician and composer D.C. Vackar; Australian novelist Miles
Franklin; German writer, social scientist, and women's rights advocate
Gertrud Bäumer; French scientist and mathematician Théophile Moreux;
Swedish writer Gunnar Rudberg; American theologist Henry Sloane Coffin;
German writer and editor Franz Pfemfert; Swedish oceanographer Walfrid
Ekman; British philatelist Stanley Phillips; American author and editor
Bliss Perry; American sociologist and educator Howard Washington Odum;
American poet and critic Shaemas O'Sheel; Spanish essayist and novelist
Eugenio d' Ors; Belgian sculptor Victor Rousseau; and Bulgarian author
Nikolai Rainov.

Just to name a few. Phew.

Of interest to Canadians, in the life+70 copyright universe the works of
J.E. Preston-Muddock will enter the public domain. (Except that, of
course, post-1922 Preston-Muddock work will still be under copyright in
the cultural lockdown that persists in the United States.)

Whothatnow?

The novelist who sometimes wrote under the pseudonym "Dick Donovan".

Huh?

He also wrote "The Sunless City", first published exactly a century ago in
1905.

The hero of which was Flintabattey Flonatin. Whence the name of Flin Flon,
Manitoba.

The dead hand of dead-letter copyright is lifted on the works of these,
and many others, and society can recreate and build on the legacy they
left us.

Short live copyright, and long live the public domain!

Happy Public Domain Day, 2005!