You May See A Lot More Stuff Like This Soon

🤔 Why it's a big deal: On January 1, more than 400,000 works entered the public domain — one of the largest amounts since the start of copyright law — including Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, Felix Salten's Bambi, Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, and A.A. Milne's 1st Winnie-the-Pooh book.

Copyrights protect original works of authorship, like movies, songs, and even computer software. Over time, a copyright expires, at which point it can be renewed or allowed to lapse.

The first US copyright laws, passed in 1790, set a term of 14 years. But over time it's been extended, most recently to 50 to 70 years after an author's death, or 95 years after the publication of a corporate work. And until two years ago, a 20-year copyright extension had stopped additional works from entering the public domain (largely thanks to Disney).

• So because Winnie-the-Pooh is now in the public domain, Reynolds and Maximum Effort don't have to pay any licensing fees or receive creative approval to use or build upon the newly unlocked works – and neither does anyone else.

👁 Looking ahead… As we alluded to earlier, remixers of Winnie-the-Pooh may still have trouble navigating Disney's control over the brand and later works. The owners of the Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, and Zorro properties tried to interfere with legal reuses after the original works began to enter the public domain.

+Go deeper: Jennifer Jenkins, director of Duke's public domain center, wrote this piece exploring how the whole situation could play out.