In the leadup to our first public domain film screening on April 12th, we would like to introduce the curious case of a film entering the public domain immediately upon its release (Wikipedia).
In the realm of classic cinema, few films possess the enduring charm and intrigue of “Charade.” Released in 1963, this romantic comedy-thriller captivated audiences with its charismatic leads, sophisticated plot twists, and stylish Parisian backdrop. Yet, behind its glamorous facade lies a curious tale of copyright ambiguity and the unexpected journey into the public domain.
The Charismatic Charade
Directed by Stanley Donen, “Charade” stars the legendary Audrey Hepburn as Regina Lampert, a young woman entangled in a web of mystery following her husband’s murder. Alongside her is the incomparable Cary Grant, portraying the enigmatic Peter Joshua, whose true intentions remain shrouded in secrecy. The film’s witty dialogue, suspenseful plot, and undeniable chemistry between the leads made it an instant classic upon its release.
Copyright Conundrum Turned Opportunity
“Charade” found itself in a unique predicament due to an oversight in its initial release—the omission of a copyright notice, which at the time meant that the movie was not protected by copyright at all (Wikipedia). This unintentionally liberated the film, allowing it to enter the public domain in the United States.
The absence of copyright protection transformed “Charade” into a cultural treasure, accessible to all. It paved the way for widespread distribution through television broadcasts, home video releases, and digital platforms, democratizing access to this cinematic gem.
Join Us for a Screening on April 12th!
The Internet Archive will be holding a screening of Charade on Friday, April 12th starting at 6:30 pm, as the first of a series of public domain film nights.
Local film writer and Archive.org community member Keith Rockmael will introduce the film.
Once upon a time, Liz Gotauco fell in love with fairy tales. That is, making videos while retelling them with some quirky twists.
Librarian Liz Gotauco, aka “Cosbrarian” across social media.
By day, Gotauco is a full-time public librarian in Rhode Island. On nights and weekends, she creates content for TikTok, Instagram and YouTube under the name Cosbrarian (a portmanteau of “cosplay” and “librarian”). Gotauco takes a traditional fairy tale or folk tale, writes her own scripts, and films herself telling it — often wearing costumes and using props to make it come alive.
To find the original fairy tales, many of which are in books that are out of print, Gotauco often uses the Internet Archive. She lists her more than 100 stories and sources on her website.
“It has been invaluable to me to have an easily accessible resource like the Internet Archive at my fingertips,” Gotauco said. “Sometimes I’m writing my content on the fly—but I don’t want my time constraints to compromise my research. Being able to quickly find a reputable source is such a gift, especially to those of us without academic library access.”
In her saucy, darker, and wilder versions of fairy tales for adult audiences, she weaves in humor and commentary. Gotauco likes to feature lesser-known folklore from a variety of cultures for her series, “Around the World in 80 Folk Tales.” Many of these books are old and no longer on library shelves, but she often finds them at the Internet Archive.
“I was blown away that there was so much in the collection,” she said. Gotauco recently found Inuit folk tales and stories from Latin America that she adapted. Her online audience also requests stories from their home countries, and she is intentional about representation in her work.
Once she discovers books in the Archive, Gotauco said she then sometimes buys a copy to add to her collection at home.
Gotauco started as a freelance content creator in 2021. It has almost become a part-time job, as she produces about two videos a week, which are available for free to viewers.
“The responses I’m most happy to get are when I make people laugh,” she said. “Especially since I started during the early pandemic, some people were like, “Wow, I just really needed to smile today and this did it for me.’”
Gotauco is busier these days, but plans to continue producing new content and hopes material continues to be available through the Archive to support her endeavor.
“Fairy tales have always been a part of my life. It’s been nice to indulge in that interest and find other people whose interests are the same,” said Gotauco, who has enjoyed tapping into her love for theater. “It’s partially a performance piece, as well as storytelling. I’ve been able to merge my two personas: the theater kid Liz and librarian Liz.”
Hundreds of people from all over the world gathered together on January 25 to honor the thousands of movies, plays, books, poems and songs that recently entered the U.S. public domain.
Steamboat Willie, Walt Disney’s 1928 animated film featuring Mickey Mouse, had top billing at the virtual event. Literature now free from restriction for reuse includes Orlando by Virginia Woolf and Tarzan Lord of the Jungle by Edgar R. Burroughs. Sound recordings from 1923 (released on a different schedule) joined the public domain such as ”Down Hearted Blues” by Bessie Smith and ”Who’s Sorry Now” by Isham Jones Orchestra.
WATCH RECORDING:
“There’s so much to rediscover and to celebrate,” said Jennifer Jenkins, director of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law School. For example, the release of The Great Gatsby into the public domain in 2021 inspired a creative flurry — new versions of the novel from the perspective of different characters, a prequel telling the backstory of Nick Caraway, a young adult remix, and song. “From the serious to the creative, to the whimsical to the wacky, these are all the great things we can do…now that [these works] are in the public domain and free to copy, to share, to digitize and to build upon without permission or fee.”
The winning film from the Public Domain Day 2024 Remix Contest was shown as well: “Sick on New Year’s,” by Ty Cummings. Every year since 2021, this contest has invited artists to remix works from its collection to showcase new and creative uses of public domain materials. Fifty films were submitted to this year’s competition, according to Amir Esfahania, artist in residence at the Archive. Learn more about the finalists or watch all the submissions in our recent blog post.
Advocacy
“Celebrating the public domain is not just about vintage references and period-appropriate clothing. It’s about understanding history to inform the present day,” said Lila Bailey, Internet Archive senior policy counsel and co-host of the virtual festivities. “We think there should be time set aside every year to celebrate the immense riches that free and open culture provides to everyone.”
While federal holiday recognition (like MLK Day or Presidents’ Day) for the public domain is unlikely, there was a discussion of an advocacy campaign for establishment of a commemorative Public Domain Day (more along the lines of National Data Privacy Day or National Whistleblowers Day).
“It only requires a simple resolution in the Senate with high chances of recognition,” said Amanda Levendowski, director of Georgetown Law School’s Intellectual Property and Information Policy Clinic. “Prospects for passage are way better than possible. About 80 percent of proposals are passed — and maybe next year, Public Domain Day will be among them.”
Experts said a successful drive for the designation will require a collaborative effort. A kickoff event will be held February 29 in New York City, hosted by Library Futures, executive director Jennie-Rose Halperin announced.
AI and the Public Domain
The online program also featured a panel discussion on generative artificial intelligence, copyright and artist expression. Experts weighed in on just what should be the copyright status of the outputs of generative AI.
Panelists (clockwise from top left): Lila Bailey (Internet Archive), Heather Timm (artist), Maxximillian (artist), Matthew Sag (Emory Law), and Juliana Castro Varón (Cita Press).
Now, AI tools can turn text or simple descriptions into images that are genuinely new and often look like exactly the kind of things that people get copyrighted if a human made them, explained Matthew Sag, professor of law, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data science at Emory University.
“The copyright office is quite clear that to get copyright, you have to have human authorship. So something created entirely by an unsupervised machine is not eligible for copyright,” Sag said, noting that the courts have recently agreed. “The interesting question is what about when humans are using AI as a tool and directing the output. This is where the controversy really is.”
On the panel, two artists, Heather Timm and Maxximillian, shared how they both leverage AI in the creative process.
Timm said she started using generative AI in 2021 and thinks the copyright office should cover works that have results from it. She has trained AI models on her own physical work and then created something new collaborating with the machine, as well as conceptualized how to blend different pieces of work in a collage or sculpture.
“I use it almost as a notebook,” Timm said. “If I have a concept or an idea about something on the go, I can immediately prompt that and have it as a placeholder to explore it later.”
As a filmmaker and musician, Maxximillian said she feels passionate about AI and it has saved her time creating animated characters and helping refine her text. “As a professional artist, I rely on copyright to keep viable the works that I produce for clients legally,” said Maxximillian. “It’s important to understand that copyright protection enables the creator to be a steward of that work. The question to consider: Who benefits by denying copyright on AI? I think nobody benefits.”
An open access publisher, Juliana Castro Varón, design director and founder of Cita Press, also addressed the issue. “I believe that AI may pose economic, power, and labor challenges, but I feel very confident that creativity will survive technology,” she said. All books Cita produces are in the public domain for everyone to download. “We are not at all against people using AI for their work, but we continue to hire humans…elevating the work of people is core to our mission.”
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The event was co-hosted by Internet Archive and Library Futures with support from Creative Commons, Authors Alliance, Public Knowledge, SPARC and Duke Law’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain.
After sifting through a sea of talent and creativity, we are thrilled to present the cinematic achievements of three winners and two honorable mentions in our Public Domain Day 2024 Remix Contest. These winning entries not only captivated our imaginations, but also showcased the immense power of remixing, reimagining, and breathing new life into public domain works.
View the winning entries & honorable mentions below. Rick Prelinger, noted film archivist, helped judge the competition and offers why each film was selected for recognition.
Found-footage filmmaking is all about taking material that might have almost-sacred status and, well, bringing it back down to earth. We find this film worthy of our first prize because of its irreverent humor and skilled editing, its playful predictions of the future, and because it points to the limitless opportunities that a constantly-refreshed public domain offers makers in all media.
Second Place: “Keaton and Kaufman: The Cameramen” by Max Teeth
This film brings together two characters who will be familiar to people who love films, characters that lived and worked very far away from one another and did deeply different work, but might perhaps have more in common with one another than we might think. We see it as a poetic piece, a loving tribute to some of the people who put the motion in motion pictures.
Third Place: “Just Like a Hollywood Star” by Timothy Johnson
Our 3rd prize winner is a rich montage of sound and picture, focusing on images that model beauty, fitness, posture, proper behavior, and the laws of physics. We like this film’s uninhibited reach and its draw from wildly disparate material, often pretty predictable, to produce an unpredictable result.
Honorable Mention, Historical Perspective: “A Member of the Family” by Lizzy Tolentino
Combining government-produced films, family home movies and an unusual sponsored film by a world-famous company, this filmmaker makes a chilling statement about the gap between the promise of our society and the reality of 20th-century history. The public domain is a record of both proud achievements and disturbing histories, and we feel this film exemplified the potential of the public domain to reveal histories that some might prefer to be kept silent.
Honorable Mention, Quirkiest Film: “Domain” by Cullen J. Sanchez
Sometimes you just have to recognize the unusual. But this unusual film makes a critical point about the public domain — that WE are the public domain, and the public domain is us. Take it away! “It’s us. It’s all of us.”
We’ve heard you loud and clear since January 1—you love the public domain! We do, too, so let’s celebrate together…
Next week we have two events to help welcome the new works of art that entered the public domain (in the US) on January 1. We hope you can join us in-person or online:
Wednesday, January 24
Public Domain Day Party in San Francisco! Celebrate 1928 In-Person at the Internet Archive 6pm – 8pm PT $15 registration – Register now!
Step into a time capsule of creativity as we celebrate the release of new cultural treasures into the public domain. Join us for an unforgettable evening filled with period tunes, classic cocktails, and a cinematic journey into the past. These works, once bound by copyright restrictions, will be released into the wild, opening up new opportunities for artistic expression, adaptation, and innovation.
Thursday, January 25
Weird Tales from the Public Domain: Freeing Culture from Corporate Captivity Online 10am PT – 11:30am PT Free – Register now!
The mouse that became Mickey is finally free of his corporate captivity as the copyright term of the 1928 animated Disney film, Steamboat Willie, expired along with that of thousands of other cultural works on the first day of 2024.
Join us for a virtual celebration with an amazing lineup of academics, librarians, musicians, artists and advocates coming together to help illuminate the significance of this new class of works entering the public domain!
Remix Contest – Deadline for submission is January 19
There’s still time to register for our Public Domain Day Remix Contest. We are looking for filmmakers and artists of all levels to create and upload short films of 2–3 minutes to the Internet Archive to help us celebrate Public Domain Day! Read the contest guidelines.
This year we are welcoming many works from 1928 into the U.S. public domain (books, movies, images, etc.), as well as recorded sound from 1923.
Some of the big events from 1928 include the first machine sliced and wrapped loaf of bread being sold, the fatal Okeechobee hurricane, the failure of the St. Francis Dam in Los Angeles, the discovery of a moldy petri dish that would lead to the creation of penicillin, Amelia Earheart flying across the Atlantic, and a certain mouse making his public debut.
Movies
Everybody’s talking about Mickey. On November 18th, 1928 Steamboat Willie was published, the third Mickey Mouse film by Walt Disney and the first one to be published with sound. The prior two Mickey Mouse films, including Plane Crazy, had not been picked up for distribution so this was the public’s first introduction to the mouse. Steamboat Willie may have been named after another popular movie that came out in 1928, Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill, Jr., or perhaps the Vaudeville song, “Steamboat Bill” (popularized in 1910) which was included in the soundtrack (along with the 19th century song “Turkey in the Straw”).
The Jazz Age was really swinging, and 1923 saw the first recordings by King Oliver’s Jazz Band, including early work from Louis Armstrong on Dipper Mouth Blues. The first recorded example of jazz band boogie-woogie also came out that year, The Fives by Tampa Blue Jazz Band. And dancing the Charleston became a craze in 1923, thanks to Charleston from the 1923 musical “Runnin’ Wild.”
While the entrance to Tutankhamun’s tomb was found in 1922, it wasn’t until February of 1923 that the tomb was unsealed and of course the event was memorialized in song, including Old King Tut by Billy Jones and Ernest Hare, and Tut-Ankh-Amen (In the Valley of the Kings) by S. S. Leviathan Orchestra.
Some popular songs from 1923 that are have joined the public domain include:
The mouse that became Mickey will finally be free of his corporate captivity as the copyright term of the 1928 animated Disney film, Steamboat Willie, expires along with that of thousands of other cultural works on the first day of 2024.
The year 1928 brought us a host of still relevant, oft-revived and remixed culture, from H.P. Lovecraft’s classic horror story, “Call of Cthulhu” (originally published in Weird Tales; now currently a popular video game), to the Threepenny Opera, a critique of income inequality and the excesses of capitalism that is surprisingly on point for our current era.
And further, classic works of literature such as Orlando by Virginia Woolfe, Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall, and Black Magic by Paul Mourad; children’s literature like House on Pooh Corner by A. A. Milne, which introduced the character Tigger, and Millions of Cats by Wanda Gág; movies like Charlie Chaplin’s The Circus, and Buster Keaton’s The Cameraman; and music like Dorothy Field’s “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love, Baby” and Cole Porter’s “Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall in Love” will grow the rich set of materials that are freely available to all of us as part of the public domain.
Join us for a virtual celebration at 10am PT / 1pm ET on January 25, 2024, with an amazing lineup of academics, librarians, musicians, artists and advocates coming together to help illuminate the significance of this new class of works entering the public domain!
Of course our program wouldn’t be complete without a discussion of Generative AI, which to some has become a new kind of Eldritch God unleashed upon humanity—a Chtulhu of sorts—out to alter or control human reality. New AI technologies have raised all kinds of questions about human creativity, and the various monsters we must vanquish in order to preserve it. We’ll get into all that and more in our panel discussion of AI, Creativity and the Public Domain.
This event is co-hosted by Internet Archive, Creative Commons, Authors Alliance, Public Knowledge, Library Futures, SPARC and the Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain.
Step into a time capsule of creativity on January 24, 2024, at the Internet Archive, as we celebrate the release of new cultural treasures into the public domain. Join us for an unforgettable evening filled with period tunes, classic cocktails, and a cinematic journey into the past. These works, once bound by copyright restrictions, will be released into the wild, opening up new opportunities for artistic expression, adaptation, and innovation.
Discover the enchantment of animation with a special screening of Steamboat Willie on the large screen. Come together to witness the beloved icon, Mickey Mouse, as he enters the public domain. Let’s rejoice in this moment that commemorates the lasting legacy of a cultural gem that has captivated hearts across generations. Film Historian Eric Smoodin will explore the history of Steamboat Willie and how a mouse changed the entertainment world.
Be captivated by the cinematic brilliance of our annual short film contest winners. These films, inspired by the vast public domain materials on the Internet Archive, showcase the boundless possibilities of reimagining classic works.
Embrace the spirit of 1928 by dressing in your finest flapper dresses, dapper suits, and don’t forget the feathered headbands. You’re not just attending an event; you’re stepping into a world where every outfit tells a story. Be the “Bee’s Knees” and the “Cat’s Pajamas” as you immerse yourself in the glamour of a bygone era.
No celebration from the Jazz Age is complete without a classic cocktail. Let the clink of glasses echo the liberation of creative works now set free in the public domain.
Come share an evening of revelry, inspiration, and artistic freedom with us. Be part of a celebration where the past becomes the canvas for the future. Let the reimagining begin, and together, let’s toast to a world of boundless creativity in the public domain. See you there in your finest attire!
Where: Internet Archive – 300 Funston When: 6pm to 8 pm Cost: $15 Register now!
More ways to celebrate the public domain
In addition to our in-person event on January 24th & our film remix contest, we are also hosting a virtual celebration on January 25th, “Weird Tales from the Public Domain: Freeing Culture from Corporate Captivity”—register now!
We are looking for filmmakers and artists of all levels to create and upload short films of 2–3 minutes to the Internet Archive to help us celebrate Public Domain Day at our celebrations on January 24 (in-person screening & party) & January 25 (virtual celebration), 2024!
Our short film contest serves as a platform for filmmakers to explore, remix, and breathe new life into the timeless gems that have entered the public domain. From classic literature and silent films to musical compositions and visual art, the contest winners draw inspiration from the vast archive of cultural heritage from 1928. We want artists to use this newly available content to create short films using resources from the Internet Archive’s collections from 1928. The uploaded videos will be judged and prizes of up to $1500 awarded!! (see details below)
Winners will be announced and shown at the in-person Public Domain Day Celebration at the Internet Archive headquarters in San Francisco on January 24, 2024, as well as our virtual celebration on January 25. All other participating videos will be added to a Public Domain Day Collection on archive.org and featured in a blog entry in January of 2024.
Here are a few examples of some of the materials that will become public domain on January 1, 2024:
Make a 2–3 minute movie using at least one work published in 1928 that will become Public Domain on January 1, 2024. This could be a poem, book, film, musical composition, painting, photograph or any other work that will become Public Domain next year. The more different PD materials you use, the better!
Note: If you have a resource from 1928 that is not available on archive.org, you may upload it and then use it in your submission. (Here is how to do that).
Your submission must have a soundtrack. It can be your own voiceover or performance of a public domain musical composition, or you may use public domain or CC0 sound recordings from sources like Openverse and the Free Music Archive.
Note: Music copyright is TRICKY! Currently sound recordings published up to December 31, 1922 are public domain; on the upcoming January 1 that will change to sound recordings published up to December 31, 1923. Sound recordings published later than that are NOT public domain, even if the underlying musical composition is, so watch out for this!
Mix and Mash content however you like, but note that ALL of your sources must be from the public domain. They do not all have to be from 1928. Remember, U.S. government works are public domain no matter when they are published. So feel free to use those NASA images! You may include your own original work if you put a CC0 license on it.
Add a personal touch, make it yours!
Keep the videos light hearted and fun! (It is a celebration after all!)
Submission Deadline
All submissions must be in by Midnight, January 19, 2024 (PST) by loading it into this collection on the Internet Archive.
Upload your film to archive.org with a subject tag field of “public domain day film contest 2024” in the upload form by January 17, 2024. This is the collection it will be archived in.
Link all your sourced materials from 1928 in the upload description
Prizes
1st prize: $1500
2nd prize: $1000
3rd prize: $500
*All prizes sponsored by the Kahle/Austin Foundation
Judges:
Judges will be looking for videos that are fun, interesting and use public domain materials, especially those from 1928. They will be shown at the in-person Public Domain Day party in San Francisco and should highlight the value of having cultural materials that can be reused, remixed, and re-contextualized for a new day. Winners’ pieces will be purchased with the prize money, and viewable on the Internet Archive under a Creative Commons license.
Amir Saber Esfahani (Director of Special Arts Projects, Internet Archive)
Rick Prelinger (Board Member, Internet Archive, Founder, Prelinger Archives)
BZ Petroff (Director of Admin & HR, Internet Archive)
People from around the world — many wearing their best roaring ‘20s attire — came to the Internet Archive’s online party on January 19 to toast creative works recently added to the public domain.
The event was hosted in partnership with SPARC, Creative Commons, Library Futures, Authors Alliance, Public Knowledge, and Duke’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain.
“We’re celebrating works published in 1927 becoming open to all in the United States where we can legally share, post, and build upon them without permission or fee,” said Jennifer Jenkins of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law School. “You’re free to reimagine the characters, the events, the settings, the imagery, and use them in your own stories, musical plays, and movies.”
Librarians and archivists are eager to preserve these cultural materials, the vast majority of which are out of circulation. Now that they’re in the public domain, anyone can preserve them and digitize them — making them more discoverable.
“The public domain is important because it enables access to cultural materials that might otherwise be lost to history,” Jenkins said.
The first full-length film featuring synchronized sound was produced in 1927: The Jazz Singer with Al Jolson.
Rob Byrne, a film restorer and president of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, explained at the event that previous films were not truly silent since every motion picture performance in the 1920s was accompanied by live musicians—from full orchestras in big cities to single piano players in small town theaters. The average American went to the movies more than three times every week, and international movies were accepted because there were no language barriers, Bryne added.
Unfortunately, more than 80% of all the films produced prior to 1930 have been lost.
Even fewer films featuring Black casts made for Black audiences survived, said Cara Cadoo, associate professor of history, cinema and media studies at Indiana University. “Race has always been a part of the story of the American cinema,” she said.
It was because she could easily view movies in the public domain that Cadoo said she was recently able to discover a clip from a lost Black film. Through some detective work, she identified footage from the 1917 film, “The Trooper of Troop K,” while studying another film from 2023. “This history is something that just in recent decades, people have taken seriously,” Cadoo said.
Interest in the public domain is global! The map above shows where our viewers watched the celebration.
Brigitte Vezina, director of policy and open culture at Creative Commons, explained that libraries, museums and archives still face big challenges simply to fulfill their mission in the digital world. (See report Barriers to Open Culture.) Institutions are working in an outdated framework and copyright policy reform is needed, she said.
“We’ve been promoting open culture to build a more equitable, accessible, and innovative world,” said Vezina, citing its new call to action policy guide. “It’s based on this rich experience that our open culture program supports better sharing of cultural heritage globally.”
Along with works celebrated from 1927, SPARC’s Nick Shockey talked about another important milestone in expanding public access to knowledge. In August, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy issued new guidance that requires the federal government set the default to open for all publicly funded research in the United States.
“This will make over $80 billion each year in research produced with the support of U.S. taxpayer dollars immediately available to anyone online,” Shockey said. “The priority is part of a broader commitment to advancing equity in science and scholarship and recognizing the ways in which openness can be a powerful enabler of more equitable systems.”
“As we celebrate today, I hope the momentum that we generate can be channeled into ongoing advocacy to ensure that more and more of the knowledge that shapes our world is made available to everybody and to more fully realize the right of sharing knowledge,” Shockey said.
For an example of the value of free sharing of information from the federal government, Meredith Rose, senior policy counsel with Public Knowledge, highlighted NASA’s public posting of images from the Webb space telescope.
“Some things are born free,” said Internet founder Brewster Kahle. “Democracies around the world publish openly because they believe in education and they want it to be spread as widely as possible.”
Open does not always mean easily accessible, however. Kahle is working on Democracy’s Library, a project to gather government material from the U.S., Canada and around the world and preserve them in one place.
“This is the internet we’re dreaming of. Let’s go and make sure that it’s got all of the public domain materials publicly accessible – not just all those things that are from the classic era. Let’s go and celebrate the current public domain.”
Also presenting at the celebration was Rick Prelinger, an archivist, filmmaker, writer and educator. He began collecting ephemeral films (used for specific purposes such as advertising, educational and industrial films) in 1983. His collection of 60,000 films was acquired by the Library of Congress in 2002. He partnered with the Internet Archive to make a subset of the collection — now more than 8,500 films — available online for free viewing, downloading and reuse in the Prelinger Archive.
Throughout the program, students from the Snowden International School (Boston) and the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of The Arts (San Francisco) read poetry newly entered into the public domain from Caroling Dusk: an anthology of verse by Negro poets by Countee Cullen.
Jennie Rose Halperin, executive director of Library Futures, and Lila Bailey, senior policy counsel at the Internet Archive co-hosted the party.
