What is public domain? When works become free to use

The public domain is the body of creative work that no one owns: books, music, films, images and other works whose copyright has expired, was given up, or never existed. Whatever is in it, anyone may copy, adapt, perform or sell without asking or paying. What is public domain today is a mix of the very old and the never protected: Shakespeare's plays, Beethoven's symphonies, the Odyssey and NASA's photographs. Every year, on 1 January, more works join them.

In short

• A work enters the public domain in three ways: its copyright term runs out, its creator gives it away, or it was never protectable at all.
• The date depends on the country: the same book can be free in Britain and still protected in the United States.
• Public domain frees the work itself, not trademarks, later versions or the rights in a new recording or edition.

Copyright terms differ by country, and each example below says which country it is for. This note explains the rules; it isn't legal advice.

How does a work enter the public domain?

There are three routes, and each has its own logic.

The first and most common is expiry. Copyright is a temporary right by design, a bargain in which creators get a monopoly for a limited time and the public gets the work for good afterwards. When the term ends, the work is free everywhere that term applies.

The second is dedication. A creator can give up their rights on purpose. The most widely used tool for this is CC0, from the nonprofit Creative Commons, which waives every right the law allows, worldwide, so far as each country lets a creator do so, as Creative Commons explains. Many museums now release images of the old paintings they own this way.

The third is that some material was never protected. Facts, ideas and mathematical formulas can't be owned by copyright anywhere, and in the US, short phrases and titles can't either. In the United States, works made by federal government employees as part of their jobs are public domain from the start under 17 U.S.C. § 105, which is why NASA photographs and federal reports are free to reuse. Many other countries, including the UK, keep copyright in government work instead. And in the US, until rules changed in 1989, a published work could fall into the public domain by mistake, for lack of a copyright notice, or, before 1964, because its owner never filed a renewal, according to the Cornell University Library chart.

How do you work out when a work enters the public domain?

Two rules cover most cases. Life plus 70 is the term in the European Union, the UK and, for works created from 1978 on, the United States. The other is the US rule for older works: works published between 1923 and 1977 with a valid copyright are protected for 95 years from publication. Every term runs to the end of a calendar year, so works go free on 1 January.

Example 1: Steamboat Willie, under the US 95-year rule

1. Disney released the cartoon Steamboat Willie, the first Mickey Mouse film with synchronized sound, in 1928.
2. Add 95 years: 1928 + 95 = 2023. The copyright lasted through 31 December 2023.
3. On 1 January 2024 the film, and the version of Mickey in it, entered the US public domain.

It nearly happened much sooner. Under the law of 1928, the term was 56 years at most, which would have freed Steamboat Willie in 1984. Congress lengthened terms in 1976 and again in 1998, and the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law School describes the 1998 extension as a 20-year pause: almost no published works entered the US public domain from 1999 until 2019.

Example 2: George Orwell, under two rules at once

1. Orwell died in January 1950. Under life plus 70 in the UK and EU, his copyrights ran to 31 December 2020.
2. So Nineteen Eighty-Four entered the public domain in Britain and the EU on 1 January 2021.
3. In the United States, the novel's term is counted from its publication in 1949: 1949 + 95 = 2044. It stays protected there until 1 January 2045.

That gap of 24 years is why a website in London can lawfully publish the full text of the novel while a US publisher still needs a license.

What became public domain recently?

Every 1 January brings a new year's works into the US public domain. On 1 January 2026, works published in 1930 joined, according to Duke's Public Domain Day list: William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, Agatha Christie's The Murder at the Vicarage, the film All Quiet on the Western Front, the songs "I Got Rhythm" and "Georgia on My Mind", and the first Betty Boop and the dog later named Pluto. In life-plus-70 countries, the works of authors who died in 1955 went free on the same day. Sound recordings follow separate US rules; recordings from 1925 entered in 2026.

What does public domain not mean?

Three misconceptions cause most of the trouble.

What people assume	What is actually true
It's online and free to view, so it's public domain	Almost everything posted online is still under copyright. Being easy to copy says nothing about who owns it.
Mickey is public domain, so anyone can use Mickey	Only the 1928 Mickey is free. Later versions, with white gloves and other added features, are still protected, and Disney's trademarks in Mickey, which can last as long as they are used, still stop anyone selling goods in a way that suggests Disney made them.
An old work is free, so every copy of it is free	A new translation, edition, arrangement or recording has its own copyright. The Odyssey is public domain; a translation published in 2017 is not.

A related confusion is between public domain and open licenses. Free and open-source software such as Linux is not public domain: its authors keep their copyright and use it to set the terms, such as the GPL's rule that anyone who distributes changed versions must share the source code. A Creative Commons license that asks for credit works the same way. Public domain means no conditions at all.

A useful rule: treat a work as protected until you can name the route by which it went free. Check the country, the date of publication or the author's death, and whether you are using the original or a later version.

Why does the public domain matter?

The public domain is the raw material of new culture. Disney itself built early hits on public domain stories, among them Snow White, Pinocchio and Cinderella. When works go free, new editions, adaptations and cheaper copies follow: after Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories were ruled largely public domain in the United States in 2014, new Holmes novels, films and shows no longer needed a license from his estate. Scholars, teachers and archives can digitize and share old books and films without tracing heirs who may be impossible to find.

The Odyssey shows how long the commons has been working: an epic composed before any law of copyright existed has been retold, translated and adapted for some 2,700 years. How long terms should be is a question of law and policy, not nature. The first US copyright act, in 1790, gave 14 years, renewable once.

Check yourself

• Without looking back: name the three routes by which a work becomes public domain.
• Work it out: a novel was published in the US in 1935 with a valid, renewed copyright. On what date does it enter the US public domain?
• Why can a public domain character still be off-limits on a T-shirt?

Sources

• Public Domain Day 2024 — Center for the Study of the Public Domain, Duke Law School, 2024
• Public Domain Day 2026 — Center for the Study of the Public Domain, Duke Law School, 2026
• Copyright term and the public domain in the United States — Cornell University Library
• CC0, No Rights Reserved — Creative Commons
• Public domain — Wikipedia