January 1st of every year is Public Domain Day. This is a day to celebrate the items that have entered the public domain. In the United States, we’ll have nothing to celebrate this year, as nothing will enter the public domain until 2019. That is because the 1976 Copyright Act changed the terms of copyright to 70 years after the author’s death or 95 years after publication for corporate works. This means the items that would have become public domain on January 1st, 2014 under the previous copyright act, won’t enter the public domain until 2053.
Duke University’s, Center for the Study of the Public Domain has a great site on this topic: http://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/index
