Over the last few years we have seen many new characters enter the public domain including Winnie-the-Pooh in 2022, Mickey Mouse in 2024, and now, Popeye in 2025! The character emerged from a comic strip called Thimble Theater, which was started in 1919 and originally centered around the characters Ham Gravy and Olive Oyl. Popeye made his first appearance in the series as a minor player in early 1929, and as his popularity grew, he later became the central focus of the comic.
Let’s take a look at who Popeye was as a character in 1929:
In his very first appearance, Popeye shows off his thorny side by retorting Castor Oyl’s question with a sly remark about being a cowboy. The strip also shows him in a traditional all white sailor get-up that does not reflect his later appearance.
Popeye throws his first ever punch. This time against Ham Gravy, one of the main characters of the strip at this point. The title, “That Sailor’s No Gentleman”, is indicative of Popeye’s rough and tough demeanor that would come to define the character.
After being shot repeatedly nearly a month earlier, in May 1929, Popeye reemerges full of bullet holes to knock down a foe. His displays of super strength do not originate from spinach, but possibly from rubbing the head of the Whiffle Hen (as seen on May 16, 1929).
Olive Oyl displays her first inclinations of romantic interest toward Popeye stating she would like to give him a kiss. The two do not become romantically involved in 1929, but the seeds were planted early.
This strip sees Popeye leave until August. However, his departure is not even the main appeal of the strip as it instead focuses on Olive Oyl’s purchase of new clothing. This focus and Popeye’s long absence, he is gone for all of July, thus implies that he was not meant to be a long lasting character, but only around temporarily.
Following over a month-long absence, Popeye returns to help Castor Oyl determine if Olive’s new boyfriend is only there for her money. His return indicates his overwhelming popularity with the public that was soon to transpire into his status as unchallenged main character of the strip. The title of this strip too foreshadows this shift being titled: Popeye’s The Man.
Olive Oyl displays her first show of affection to Popeye with a kiss. Though this was a mistake as she believed Popeye to be someone else. Despite this, it is yet another early indicator of their soon to be romance.
Popeye and Castor Oyl set off to locate Castor’s newly purchased brass mine. Their duo pairing indicates Popeye’s increased status and stature within the strip as Castor was the undeniable main character of the strip up to this point. Popeye’s appearance here again followed a brief absence from the strip dating back to September 30, 1929.
Popeye and Castor discover that where the brass mine ought to be is instead a farmer. Popeye implores Castor to allow the farmer to stay on the land, thus showing off his tender heart. Notably this strip takes place just two days before Black Thursday, the start of the Wall Street crash of 1929.
This strip shows off a bit more of Popeye’s peculiar dialect and his penchant for curving authority. In the strip he asserts that he is only going to jail because Castor has implored him to.
The title of the panel, “That Jailer’s No Postage Stamp”, also appears to be a humorous play on odd dialects installing postage stamp in lieu of “sap”. In 1920s slang, sap referred to a foolish or gullible person. The title’s swapping of the two terms is reflective of Popeye’s own tendency to swap out words with similar meaning as a postage stamp and sap are both sticky.
Another display of Popeye’s superhuman strength as he rips the bars off the jail cell.
Throughout 1929, Popeye not only showcased his superhuman strength and distinctive wardrobe but also his unique dialect and a characteristic phrase, “blow me down.” These foundational elements of his character, present from his very inception, have now entered the public domain. As we continue to engage with and reinterpret Popeye in modern contexts, there are some complexities.
Jennifer Jenkins, director of Duke Law’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain, explains the following in regards to character copyrights in a post from 2025:
“First, under US copyright law, anyone is free to use characters as they appeared in public domain works. If those characters recur in later works that are still under copyright, the rights only extend to the newly added material in those works, not the underlying material from the public domain works—that content remains freely available.
Second, with newer versions of characters, copyright only extends to their features that qualify for protection. It is not enough for the new material to be different. The features must be “original, creative expression,” meaning that they were independently created (as opposed to copied from somewhere else) and possess at least a modicum of creativity. Mere “ideas” such as generic character traits are not copyrightable. Nor are “merely trivial” or “minuscule” variations added to the original characters. In addition, using commonplace elements that have become standard or indispensable (copyright law calls these “scènes à faire”) is not infringement.”
As beloved characters enter the public domain, modern creators can give them a new gloss, recontextualizing them for a new audience. One memorable example is a 2023 horror movie starring a much darker vision of Winnie the Pooh: “Blood and Honey.” We look forward to seeing what modern reinterpretations of Popeye arise, now that his fundamental character traits belong to everyone as part of the public domain.
Disney’s classic animated short, “The Skeleton Dance,” is now in the public domain (Duke Law). Why is that such a big deal? Watch as Internet Archive’s Sean Dudley, a researcher specializing in the public domain, takes viewers on a tour of what makes “The Skeleton Dance” special, and why the film being open to remix and reuse is important for creators.
Hi, my name is Sean, and I’m a researcher with the Internet Archive. One of the most iconic pieces to become public domain this year was 1929’s “The Skeleton Dance.”
This Disney short is revolutionary.
Its synchronization of music and animation still holds up. Primarily animated by Ub Iwerks, the short feature skeletons turning into Lovecraftian monsters and getting down to some really cool beats.
This was in no small part thanks to Carl Stalling, who would later become famous for doing a lot of Looney Tunes music. And really being accented by the “Mickey Mouseing” effect of timing the animation to the music.
The beauty of this short is that it’s already building on the public domain with the music that it’s utilizing and taking inspiration from previous artists like Thomas Rowlandson for the skeleton designs.
And now because it’s public domain, you are able to remix, reuse, or do whatever you want with it. Because it’s ours. It belongs to all of us.
Image credit: Montage of materials moving into the public domain in 2025. Duke Law Center for the Study of the Public Domain.
Celebrate the public domain with the Internet Archive in the following ways:
Register for our Public Domain Day celebrations on January 22 – both virtual and in-person.
Submit a short film to our Public Domain Film Remix contest.
Explore the works that have entered the public domain in 2025, below.
On January 1, 2025, we celebrate published works from 1929 and published sound recordings from 1924 entering the public domain! The passage of these works into the public domain celebrates our shared cultural heritage. The ability to breathe new life into long forgotten works, remix the most popular and enduring works of the time, and to better circulate the oddities we find in thrift stores, attics, and on random pockets of the internet are now freely available for us all.
While not at the same blockbuster level as 2024 with Steamboat Willie’s passage into the public domain, works from 1929 still inhabit strong cultural significance today. The works of 1929 continue to capture the Lost Generation’s voice, the rise of sound film, and the emerging modern moment of the 1920s.
Musical Compositions
Show tunes and Jazz dominated the year with many standards that we remember today first being published. While best known for the 1952 film of the same name, Singin’ in the Rain was first published in 1929 and serves as the inspiration for our remix contest this year. George Gershwin also officially published (and copyrighted) his suite An American in Paris following a premiere in late 1928.
Below is sheet music for some popular compositions of the time.
While not a towering work of literature, the first set of comic strips featuring Popeye also are joining the public domain. Popeye first made an appearance in Thimble Theatre on January 17, 1929. Initially just a side character for an adventure arc featuring gambling and sailing, Popeye rose quickly to fame. By February 4, 1931 the Thimble Theatre would feature a subtitle, Starring Popeye, before being renamed just Popeye later on.
Below is a further selection of works from the year:
Dive into Archive’s literary collection to unearth more classics from 1929.
Films
Last year Mickey Mouse made a splash with Steamboat Willie cruising into the public domain. This year TWELVEmore Mickey shorts join to flesh out the notable events of Mickey’s young career. He speaks his first words in The Karnival Kid, he wears gloves for the first time in The Opry House, and Ub Iwerks leaves the studio at year’s end with Wild Waves. Disney animation also kickstarted their Silly Symphonies series with the haunting tales The Skeleton Dance and Hell’s Bells.
In 1929, if your film wanted to have any attention it needed sound. Musical films were everywhere with The Broadway Melodywinning the second ever Best Picture award at the Oscars, The Hollywood Revue introducing the world to “Singin’ in the Rain”, and the Marx Brothers making their big screen debut with The Cocoanuts.
Below is a list of more significant films from the year:
Our film remix contest is ongoing until January 17, 2025, so please upload your submissions! Read more here.
Additional resources
Learn more about what’s moving into the public domain in 2025 from Jennifer Jenkins and James Boyle of Duke Law’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain.
On January 1, 2025, creative works from 1929 and sound recordings from 1924 will enter the public domain in the US.
1929 marked the last gasp of the roaring 20s and ushered in the Great Depression, a major economic crisis that would span the next 12 years. One thing we can see nearly a century later is that, in good times and bad, human creativity, knowledge, and culture persist. That year, Virginia Woolfe published her groundbreaking essay, “A Room of One’s Own,” advocating for female freedom of expression. The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) opened in New York City, featuring the works of Van Gough, Cezanne, and Gauguin. Major movie studios put out not one, but two musicals starring all Black casts: “Halleluja” and “Hearts of Dixie.” Disney continued the Mickey Mouse trend with a dozen new animated shorts. And of course famous songs like “Puttin’ on the Ritz” and “Singin’ in the Rain” topped the charts.
Celebrate the public domain with us:
1. Creators: Enter the Public Domain Film Remix Contest
We invite filmmakers and artists of all skill levels to celebrate the public domain by creating and uploading 2–3 minute short films to the Internet Archive! Top entries will be awarded prizes up to $1,500. Contest details.
2. Virtual Celebration: January 22nd @ 10am PT
Join us on January 22 to get “that glorious feeling” of singin’ in the public domain! We’ll have an amazing virtual lineup of academics, librarians, musicians, artists and advocates coming together to celebrate this new class of works being free for everyone to enjoy. Register now!
3. In-Person Celebration: January 22nd @ 6pm PT
Please join us at our headquarters in San Francisco for a Celebration of the Public Domain! This year, we’re honoring 1929 — the year of the very first Academy Awards, held at the historic Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, CA. Put on your finest attire and get ready for an award-worthy evening. Register now!
4. Explore the public domain
Check out our recent post for links to the newly opened public domain resources at the Internet Archive.
Additional resources
Learn more about what’s moving into the public domain in 2025 from Jennifer Jenkins and James Boyle of Duke Law’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain.
Highlights include 1980s radio interviews with LL Cool J, Sonic Youth and more, 1960s amateur radio footage, college radio oral histories, and radio station correspondence from the 1940s-1960s
By Jennifer Waits, Curator of the DLARC College Radio Collection
Feast your eyes and ears on the latest additions to the college radio collection within the Digital Library of Amateur Radio and Communications! Over the past few months we’ve added materials from numerous college radio stations and archives, including vintage and contemporary audio, film, and video pieces.
Most recently, the archivists at New York University student radio station WNYU-FM have contributed a number of 1980s radio interviews with music luminaries, including LL Cool J, ESG, members of Sonic Youth (Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore in 1984 and Kim Gordon in 1986), Billy Idol, and Jello Biafra. Also in the WNYU collection is audio from the station’s inaugural FM broadcast in 1973, plus paper items like program guides, flyers, and correspondence.
But perhaps my favorite recent audio-visual addition is a compilation of 1960s home movies that document activities of University of Pennsylvania’s amateur radio club. They reside in our new Penn Amateur Radio Club archive, which collects items from this historically-significant club that began as the Wireless Club of the University of Pennsylvania in 1909. Early student wireless clubs were the incubators for future broadcast stations, so we hope to increase the representation of both high school and collegiate amateur radio clubs in DLARC.
Another area of curatorial interest is college radio at women’s colleges, especially since many women’s colleges built radio stations during the early carrier current boom in the 1940s and 1950s. DLARC’s new Smith College Radio Club and Stations collection provides context for understanding the college radio landscape during this time and what it was like for new stations trying to get their start. Within the collection are numerous folders full of correspondence, items from college radio conferences (including one hosted by Smith College station WCSR), organizational documents, scripts, and program schedules. Newer materials include flyers and program guides from the currently operating FM station at Smith: WOZQ-FM.
Additionally, we continue to grow our collection of Intercollegiate Broadcasting System (IBS) materials. As mentioned in our July update, this college radio trade organization began in 1940 and has been hosting conventions and producing newsletters and other publications ever since. Since they don’t have their own archive, we’ve been piecing one together thanks to all the college radio stations and institutions that have carefully preserved IBS items over the years.
As part of this effort, we added over 200 pages of IBS correspondence and related items from Smith College and have also sleuthed out various missing issues of IBS’ Journal of College Radio from a variety of sources, bringing our grand total to just about 100 issues. Do you have copies of IBS’ Journal of College Radio in your own collection? Our wish list includes College Radio (Volumes 1-3), Journal of College Radio (Volume 13.2, 19.4, 19.5, 20-22, 25.4 and any subsequent issues), and IBS newsletters and bulletins from many eras.
Finally, we have some new collections that we are just starting to populate. Take a peek at the WFMU and WHUS collections for more college radio goodies. And be sure to scope around DLARC College Radio to find other gems from stations where we haven’t established a designated collection. One of my favorites is a short animation demonstrating a Valentine’s Day-themed ‘zine from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo’s college radio station KCPR.
The Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications is funded by a grant from Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC) to create a free digital library for the radio community, researchers, educators, and students. DLARC invites radio clubs, radio stations, archives and individuals to submit material in any format. To contribute or ask questions about the project, contact: Kay Savetz at kay@archive.org.
The following guest post from writer and book artist Eve Scarborough is part of our Vanishing Culture series, highlighting the power and importance of preservation in our digital age. Read more essays online or download the full report now.
What is type ephemera and why does it need to be preserved?
Type ephemera, specifically the kind collected by Letterform Archive, refers to paper goods used to advertise or display typefaces for purchase. Often produced by foundries, type ephemera takes many structural forms and examples including—
a paper folio containing multiple examples of types in use, such as mock restaurant menus, travel pamphlets, concert programs and business cards. (below)
a saddle stitched book with one or more typefaces, referred to as a type specimen, including examples of the upper and lowercase alphabet or shown alongside sample sentences. (below)
a small booklet printed in black, red and green ink, illustrating the foundry’s seasonal collection of holiday borders and ornaments. (below)
From an archival perspective, type ephemera is important to preserve because it captures a time when past printing technologies and methods of bookbinding were abundant. While there are multiple organizations, museums and libraries dedicated to preserving fine press and book arts, not all are accessible to everyone, and only a handful focus specifically on instruction. Thus, it is urgent for type ephemera to be digitized and remain widely available to the public, especially as interest in learning book arts and letterpress printing continues to grow. Ephemera is unique in that it challenges notions of value and permanence, two ideas that dominate special collections and archives. Its temporal nature as both everyday and non-archival objects invites us to consider, and in some cases witness, how pieces of ephemera were repurposed and transformed by their makers and guardians.
It is difficult to find and name the workers who cast, set, printed, and bound the specimens that eventually made their way to the archive. At the time I was cataloging this collection, the metadata fields we used included columns to note typeface designers, foundry names, and potential partner distributors. There was also a column to include the object worktype; “metal type” appears frequently throughout the spreadsheet. As I worked, I noticed that many of the specimens were produced with acidic paper,* intended for immediate distribution to print shops and customers.
Sometimes I would come across a pamphlet or binding that expanded unexpectedly, or made use of additional space. I began making note of the type of structure or binding for each specimen in the object description field:
“Booklet, 12 pages. Saddle stitched binding. Light blue cover. Single color printing. Black ink on white paper.”
Including the names of these structures allowed me to begin filling the gaps in knowledge. By including them, I hoped that their presence would spark curiosity among viewers and provide insight to those researching book structures. Through writing and editing metadata, I could contribute to the dialogue between the object and its makers, and lend what I knew as a book artist and archival worker to future researchers and visitors.
Many of the objects I have cataloged during my time with this collection bear signs of use: paragraphs of type circled in ballpoint pen or cut out entirely, lead-smudged fingerprints likely left by typesetters, signatures coming undone from their text blocks. These details are the most precious to me. They are instances in which an object left an impression on its reader, and in turn, its readers left a tangible impression on the object. By making note of these imperfections in the metadata, I hope to preserve the labor and relational histories of the objects, and in a way, center the people who made them. 92 years ago, typography scholar Beatrice Warde argued that good printing should aim to be almost invisible, likening the rare success to a crystal goblet filled with wine (Warde 11, 13). Imperfect, dog-eared, oxidizing type specimens upend this notion, instead placing emphasis on construction and transformation rather than content. The text included in type ephemera is not meant to convey a message or narrative; rather, it is present to center and sell the type. As letterpresses are no longer the primary means of print production, new styles of letterpress printing have become popular—one example being the “bite” or heavy impression of type into paper—revealing first and foremost, the hand of the printer.
As an archivist, ephemera is endearing to me because it is a form of printed matter that is not meant to endure. Cataloging ephemera transformed the way I thought about time, decay, and value. Before entering the Archive, I favored examples of pristine letterpress printing and craft. Presently, I have grown fond of and admire the work that reminds us of our own temporality. Ephemera still holds a place in our lives, though its proliferation is diminishing as we move toward a more environmentally conscious world. Digital spaces have overwhelmingly become our personal platforms for documentation, record-keeping and more. Perhaps we live in a city that still issues paper bus tickets, or write our grocery lists on square sticky notes, or cram the free paper maps into our backpacks at the visitor center before a hike. Perhaps not. Think of the lifetimes that these objects live, crumpled into our pockets, or refused at cash registers and kiosks, waiting for their turn to be useful. How might we make meaning of, archive, or begin to transform the ephemera in our lives? What can we learn from historic type ephemera, not just as records of printmaking techniques or bound structures, but as anachronisms of the present?
* Acidic paper refers to paper manufactured with acids, a method that became popular in the mid-nineteenth century. The long cellulose chains in paper degrade slowly over time due to prolonged exposure to air, but the presence of acids catalyzes the process significantly. The presence of acid impacts the paper’s longevity, making it brittle and more susceptible to tearing.
Works Cited:
Warde, Beatrice. “The Crystal Goblet, Or Why Printing Should Be Invisible.” The Sylvan Press, 1955. Web accessed 15 September 2024.
About the author
Eve Scarborough is a Vietnamese-American writer and book artist. Her work explores the tension between structure and content, memory and language loss, and information decay as it relates to archives. Her current practice is grounded in critical theory and craft techniques including bookmaking, letterpress printing, and hand papermaking. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in English from Mills College with a minor in Book Art. Presently, she digitizes ephemera, posters, process work, and more at Letterform Archive in San Francisco.
In 2024, the Internet Archive and Authors Alliance brought together an array of authors, scholars and thought leaders to explore critical issues at the intersection of technology, culture and information science. From the labor implications of artificial intelligence in Joanne McNeil’s Wrong Way to the evolving role of fair use in Patricia Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi’s landmark publication, Reclaiming Fair Use, these conversations covered topics shaping our information-enabled future. Here are highlights from the year’s events, offering session recordings for anyone eager to revisit—or discover for the first time—the compelling ideas shared by these influential voices.
February 29: Wrong Way
Author Joanne McNeil in conversation with author Sarah Jaffe.
McNeil & Jaffe discuss the labor implications of artificial intelligence for our first book talk about a work of fiction.
For years, Teresa has passed from one job to the next, settling into long stretches of time, struggling to build her career in any field or unstick herself from an endless cycle of labor. The dreaded move from one gig to another is starting to feel unbearable. When a recruiter connects her with a contract position at AllOver, it appears to check all her prerequisites for a “good” job. It’s a fintech corporation with progressive hiring policies and a social justice-minded mission statement. Their new service for premium members: a functional fleet of driverless cars. The future of transportation. As her new-hire orientation reveals, the distance between AllOver’s claims and its actions is wide, but the lure of financial stability and a flexible schedule is enough to keep Teresa driving forward.
Author and game designer Jordan Mechner in conversation with historian Chris Kohler.
Jordan Mechner (creator of “Prince of Persia”) shares his story as a pioneer in the fast-growing video game industry from the 1980s to today, and how his family’s back story as refugees from war-torn Europe led to his own multifaceted 4-decade creative career. Interweaving of past and present, family transmission, exile and renewal are at the heart of his award-winning graphic novel “Replay: Memoir of an Uprooted Family.”
Authors Andrea I. Copland and Kathleen DeLaurenti in conversation with musician and educator Kyoko Kitamura, facilitated by music librarian Matthew Vest.
Based on coursework developed at the Peabody Conservatory, Unlocking the Digital Age: The Musician’s Guide to Research, Copyright, and Publishing by Andrea I. Copland and Kathleen DeLaurenti serves as a crucial resource for early career musicians navigating the complexities of the digital era. This guide bridges the gap between creative practice and scholarly research, empowering musicians to confidently share and protect their work as they expand their performing lives beyond the concert stage as citizen artists. It offers a plain language resource that helps early career musicians see where creative practice and creative research intersect and how to traverse information systems to share their work. As professional musicians and researchers, the authors’ experiences on stage and in academia makes this guide an indispensable tool for musicians aiming to thrive in the digital landscape.
Authors Aram Sinnreich & Jesse Gilbert in conversation with tech scholar Laura Denardis.
In The Secret Life of Data, Aram Sinnreich and Jesse Gilbert explore the many unpredictable, and often surprising, ways in which data surveillance, AI, and the constant presence of algorithms impact our culture and society in the age of global networks. The authors build on this basic premise: no matter what form data takes, and what purpose we think it’s being used for, data will always have a secret life. How this data will be used, by other people in other times and places, has profound implications for every aspect of our lives—from our intimate relationships to our professional lives to our political systems.
Author Dan Sinykin in conversation with humanities scholar Ted Underwood.
Dan Sinykin explores how changes in the publishing industry have affected fiction, literary form, and what it means to be an author. Giving an inside look at the industry’s daily routines, personal dramas, and institutional crises, he reveals how conglomeration has shaped what kinds of books and writers are published. Sinykin examines four different sectors of the publishing industry: mass-market books by brand-name authors like Danielle Steel; trade publishers that encouraged genre elements in literary fiction; nonprofits such as Graywolf that aspired to protect literature from market pressures; and the distinctive niche of employee-owned W. W. Norton. He emphasizes how women and people of color navigated shifts in publishing, arguing that writers such as Toni Morrison allegorized their experiences in their fiction.
Author Nathan Schneider in conversation with author Lilly Irani.
When was the last time you participated in an election for a Facebook group or sat on a jury for a dispute in a subreddit? Platforms nudge users to tolerate nearly all-powerful admins, moderators, and “benevolent dictators for life.” In Governable Spaces, Nathan Schneider argues that the internet has been plagued by a phenomenon he calls “implicit feudalism”: a bias, both cultural and technical, for building communities as fiefdoms. The consequences of this arrangement matter far beyond online spaces themselves, as feudal defaults train us to give up on our communities’ democratic potential, inclining us to be more tolerant of autocratic tech CEOs and authoritarian tendencies among politicians. But online spaces could be sites of a creative, radical, and democratic renaissance. Using media archaeology, political theory, and participant observation, Schneider shows how the internet can learn from governance legacies of the past to become a more democratic medium, responsive and inventive unlike anything that has come before.
Authors & copyright scholars Patricia Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi in conversation with Dave Hansen, executive director of Authors Alliance.
In the increasingly complex and combative arena of copyright in the digital age, record companies sue college students over peer-to-peer music sharing, YouTube removes home movies because of a song playing in the background, and filmmakers are denied a distribution deal when a permissions i proves undottable. Analyzing the dampening effect that copyright law can have on scholarship and creativity, Patricia Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi urge us to embrace in response a principle embedded in copyright law itself—fair use.
Author Barbara McQuade in conversation with Sarah Lamdan of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom.
American society is more polarized than ever before. We are strategically being pushed apart by disinformation—the deliberate spreading of lies disguised as truth—and it comes at us from all sides: opportunists on the far right, Russian misinformed social media influencers, among others. It’s endangering our democracy and causing havoc in our electoral system, schools, hospitals, workplaces, and in our Capitol. Advances in technology including rapid developments in artificial intelligence threaten to make the problems even worse by amplifying false claims and manufacturing credibility.
In Attack from Within, legal scholar and analyst Barbara McQuade, shows us how to identify the ways disinformation is seeping into all facets of our society and how we can fight against it.
Author James Boyle in conversation with Kate Darling of the MIT Media Lab.
Chatbots like ChatGPT have challenged human exceptionalism: we are no longer the only beings capable of generating language and ideas fluently. But is ChatGPT conscious? Or is it merely engaging in sophisticated mimicry? And what happens in the future if the claims to consciousness are more credible? In The Line, James Boyle explores what these changes might do to our concept of personhood, to “the line” we believe separates our species from the rest of the world, but also separates “persons” with legal rights from objects.
Authors Luca Messarra, Chris Freeland and Katie Livingston in a roundtable discussion.
In today’s digital landscape, corporate interests, shifting distribution models, and malicious cyber attacks are threatening public access to our shared cultural history. When digital materials are vulnerable to sudden removal—whether by design or by attack—our collective memory is compromised, and the public’s ability to access its own history is at risk.
We invite filmmakers and artists of all skill levels to celebrate Public Domain Day on January 22, 2025, by creating and uploading 2–3 minute short films to the Internet Archive!
This contest offers a chance to explore and reimagine the creative treasures entering the public domain, including works from 1929—classic literature, silent films, music, and art. Participants are encouraged to use materials from the Internet Archive’s collections to craft unique films that breathe new life into these cultural gems.
Top entries will be awarded prizes up to $1,500, with winners announced during our in-person Public Domain Day Celebration on January 22, 2025, at the Internet Archive headquarters in San Francisco. All submissions will be featured in a special Public Domain Day Collection on archive.org and highlighted in a January 2025 blog post.
Join us in this creative celebration of cultural heritage and timeless art!
Here are a few examples of some of the materials that will become public domain on January 1, 2025:
Periodicals!Black Thursday – October 24, 1929: The stock market experienced a massive drop, with panic selling beginning. Black Monday – October 28, 1929: The market fell even more sharply, accelerating the crisis. Black Tuesday – October 29, 1929: The Great Depression begins.
Make a 2–3 minute movie using at least one work published in 1929 that will become Public Domain on January 1, 2025. 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 1929 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: Sound recordings have special status under Copyright Law, so it’s important to note that while musical compositions from 1929 will be entering the public domain, the sound recordings of those works are not. Sound recordings published in 1924 will enter the public domain.
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 1929. 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 17, 2025 (PST)
Link all your sourced materials from 1929 in the upload description
Prizes
1st prize: $1500
2nd prize: $1000
3rd prize: $500
Judges will be looking for videos that are fun, interesting and use public domain materials, especially those from 1929. 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)
The following guest post from media historian Taylor Cole Miller is part of our Vanishing Culture series, highlighting the power and importance of preservation in our digital age. Read more essays online or download the full report now.
The nesting material of my university office is blank VHS tapes. A few of these tapes were well-worn security blankets with comforting shows I watched over and over to propel myself through childhood and adolescence. Where normal people might have held onto a cherished dolly or baseball glove as nostalgic trinkets of their youth, I kept my jumpy copy of CBS’ live-action Alice in Wonderland along with episodes of The Golden Girls, The Oprah Winfrey Show, and Xena: Warrior Princess. These artifacts, the ones I clung to growing up, eventually became the foundation of my research as a media historian. While writing my master’s thesis, a media ethnography of rural gay men, you’d find me at garage and estate sales every month asking if there were any old VHS tapes of Oprah lying around. And in order to even access episodes of his short-lived show, All That Glitters,for my doctoral dissertation, I had to become friendly with and visit producer Norman Lear himself to watch shows in his personal archive. Television culture is inextricably linked with American culture, but most early television is lost forever, a vanishing era of our culture with few traces.
As a scholar, my specific area of interest is television syndication—the practice of selling content directly to local stations and station ownership groups without going through a network. The stations can air these shows at whatever time and with whatever frequency they desire. There are two primary types of syndication: First-run syndication such as talk shows like The Oprah Winfrey Show or Ricki Lake; game shows like Jeopardy or Wheel of Fortune; court shows like Judge Judy or scripted originals like Xena: Warrior Princess or Star Trek: The Next Generation. And second-run syndication, most often referred to as reruns of popular shows. This means my objects of study are often limited by what is available and how. Many television shows from the last 50 or 60 years have been officially released on physical media like VHS, Betamax, LaserDisc, or DVD, or made available via streaming or on-demand services, but these are primarily primetime network or cable programs, not daily syndicated talk shows, game shows, public affairs programs, or kids’ TV. Despite its own ephemerality, syndication remains television’s best archivist: It preserves shows that can still turn a profit in reruns, even if it doesn’t always ensure their accessibility or proper care. While syndication keeps certain programs alive in archives, they often remain unaired or improperly preserved without enough demand. Those that no longer generate revenue, no matter how innovative, tend to disappear—left to decay on shelves or locked away in obsolete formats under the weight of copyright restrictions–or worse. One of the most tragic examples of this vanishing culture, allegedly twenty feet below the surface of the Upper New York Bay, is the lost archive of the DuMont Television Network.
In television’s beginning, three familiar companies expanded their operations from radio: NBC, CBS, and ABC. But there was also a fourth company competing with these fledgling television efforts—DuMont, a television and equipment manufacturer that contributed numerous innovations in the technology of TV itself. Although big commercial television was still years away, DuMont was selling television sets by the 1930s. Its 1938 set, for example, the DuMont 180, featured a massive 14-inch screen and retailed for $395-445. To help sell his sets, Allen B. DuMont opened an experimental television station (W2XVT), which operated programming that the showroom models could display to demonstrate picture quality, a practice that continued with the launch of the commercial DuMont Network in 1946.
That year, DuMont gave the greenlight to the half-hour show, Faraway Hill. Although “firsts” are hard to claim given that much of early TV history is lost, Faraway Hill is often thought to be the first network television soap opera. The show was created by David P. Lewis, who adapted it from his unfinished novel. According to Elana Levine in her history of soaps, Her Stories, like with radio soaps before, the show included “stream-of-consciousness” style voice-overs that allowed women to look away as needed under the social expectations of household duties. As reported in his obituary, Lewis said DuMont was desperate for programming, particularly during the nine hours of weekly programming it aired in competition with NBC. The show aired only ten episodes, and reportedly made no money, with Lewis claiming he did it to “test the mind of the viewer.” Through Faraway Hill, Levine argues that DuMont “experimented with visuals, including set changes, establishing shots, and some visual effects while, narratively, it tried a recapping strategy that would become a fixture of daytime TV soaps, repeating the last scene of the previous episode as the start of the next.” A second soap effort, A Woman to Remember,ran daily for five months in 1949, with half of that run appearing in daytime. Although Faraway Hill is recognized as the first primetime television serial—a format that would define all Primetime Emmy winners for Outstanding Drama Series in the 21st century—it has vanished because DuMont broadcast it live and, as far as we know, never recorded it.
Faraway Hill wasn’t the only first in its genre from DuMont. The network also aired Captain Video and His Video Rangers from 1949 to 1955, considered the first popular sci-fi television show and DuMont’s longest-running program. If you’re a fan of television comedy, you can thank Mary Kay and Johnny, often thought to be the first network sitcom—a multi-camera comedy that premiered on DuMont in 1947. DuMont was also the first network to broadcast the NFL championship game in 1951, launched Jackie Gleason’s career, and aired the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954.”
While television was predominantly white at the time, DuMont produced pioneering shows led by women of color. In 1950, the phenomenally talented Hazel Scott likely became the first Black woman to host her own television show, decades before Oprah Winfrey’s debut in national syndication. The Hazel Scott Show, which aired thrice weekly on DuMont, showcased Scott—a piano prodigy and accomplished musician who had won an early Civil Rights case–a racial discrimination lawsuit against restaurateurs Harry and Blanche Utz in February 1949. However, after she was blacklisted in Red Channels (a publication that accused entertainers of communist sympathies during the McCarthy era), a smear campaign led to the show’s cancellation, and Scott’s groundbreaking contributions to early television history have largely been forgotten.
Also lost to history is DuMont’s The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong in 1951, featuring legendary actor Anna May Wong in probably the first American television series with an Asian-American lead. Wong’s character was an art dealer whose investigative art history skills also helped her become a crime solver. There are no known recordings or even scripts of the show still in existence. The only information we have on these programs is what remains of it in schedules and TV listings. For this article, I audited several TV History textbooks from respected scholars, and I could find no mention of either The Hazel Scott Show or The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong.
DuMont Television collapsed in 1955 after clunky UHF (Ultra High Frequency) regulations hammered the final nail in its coffin. These rules limited the reach of UHF stations, putting DuMont at a disadvantage compared to the more accessible VHF (Very High Frequency) channels. Still, before its demise, DuMont produced a rich schedule of innovative programs—many of which may never be seen again. According to testimony in a report for the Library of Congress, DuMont’s television archive was intentionally destroyed as a result of the negotiations of a sale in the 1970s. Reportedly, the parties were concerned about who would be responsible for the sensitive archival needs, like temperature control, of such a massive collection. In the report, Edie Adams, a talented performer and a key figure at DuMont, along with her husband Ernie Kovacs—who hosted his own show on the network—shared what she heard about its demise while trying to archive her husband’s career. “At 2 a.m., [one of the lawyers] had three huge semis back up to the loading dock […] filled them all with stored kinescopes and 2” videotapes, drove them to a waiting barge in New Jersey, took them out on the water, made a right at the Statue of Liberty, and dumped them in the Upper New York Bay. Very neat. No problem.” While this is the commonly reported lore of DuMont’s demise, no one really knows for sure what happened. Could some materials still exist? True or not, DuMont’s metaphorical watery grave nevertheless serves as a poignant reminder for how easily traces of our past can vanish.
DuMont Network and the Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is an important repository where saved DuMont programs have been collected and made available to the public. Many of these programs survive from personal collections of performers or producers who kept copies in their personal files. The Internet Archive houses a few surviving examples of DuMont programming, including clips from Cavalcade of Stars, where The Honeymooners and Jackie Gleason made their first appearances in sketches. The archive also includes Okay, Mother, a game show that premiered in 1948, and one of the earliest daytime network TV shows, with one surviving episode available to watch.
Also in the Internet Archive are one or a few episodes each of DuMont shows now in the public domain, including The Adventures of Ellery Queen, The Arthur Murray Show, Flash Gordon, Front Page Detective, The Goldbergs, Hold That Camera, The Johns Hopkins Science Review, Kids and Company, Life is Worth Living, Man Against Crime, Miss U.S. Television Grand Finals, The Morey Amsterdam Show, The Old American Barn Dance, On Your Way, Public Prosecutor, Rocky King- Inside Detective, The School House, Sense and Nonsense, Steve Randall, They Stand Accused, Tom Corbett- Space Cadet, Twenty Questions, and You Asked for It. Beneath the surface of the Upper New York Bay might rest DuMont’s legacy, forgotten by most but not entirely lost. But while its kinescopes may have submitted to a watery grave, the efforts of open-access archives like the Internet Archive—storing the personal collections of those who saw value in preserving their histories—offer glimmers of hope. Perhaps, like my cherished collection of VHS tapes, some forgotten episode, script, or production material is still out there, waiting to be discovered, languishing in an old filing cabinet, on a neglected shelf, or in a dusty attic. Or maybe we’ll unearth some other unknown broadcast treasure in the search. With the ongoing work of archivists, collectors, and historians, maybe we can work to piece together the remnants of America’s vanishing early television history and provide to future generations. I want to believe.
About the author
Taylor Cole Miller is an Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse and a media history content creator under the handle tvdoc. His research focuses on television histories, syndication, and queer media studies and can be found in journals like Camera Obscura and Television and New Media as well as numerous anthologies and popular press outlets. He is co-editor of the forthcoming collection The Golden Girls: Essays from the Lanai from Rutgers University Press.
While we are deeply disappointed with the Second Circuit’s opinion in Hachette v. Internet Archive, the Internet Archive has decided not to pursue Supreme Court review. We will continue to honor the Association of American Publishers (AAP) agreement to remove books from lending at their member publishers’ requests.
We thank the many readers, authors and publishers who have stood with us throughout this fight. Together, we will continue to advocate for a future where libraries can purchase, own, lend and preserve digital books.
