Happy Thought for 10 January 2025

Have a Happy Thought: 

 

One of the best things about growing older is being able to see how works of art (paintings yes but also music, movies, books) refer to earlier works of art that you’ve encountered. 

Like for example how so much of Greek and Roman mythology is what we today might term “fanfic” - retellings of stories, or making up new stories, about well-known characters. 

 

Modern copyright laws prevent fanfic from really breaking into modern society in a big way, with the good intent of ensuring that artists are paid for the worth they bring to society. 

 

But those copyright laws do have an end date, which is made effective on the 1st of January for the relevant year. Different countries have different rules, here’s a couple for reference: 

• •  Artist's life plus 70 years (UK, Russia, most of EU and South America); 
  •  Artist’s life plus 50 years (New Zealand, and most of Africa and Asia); 
  •  95 years past publishing (United States)

This means that some beloved (and not-so-beloved) works from the early 20th Century are now joining works by Jane Austen and William Shakespeare as being in the “Public Domain” - meaning that you, too, can finally make that slash-horror movie featuring Mickey Mouse Steamboat Willie that you’ve always been wanting to make.  

 

Or, you can join Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (of basketball fame) in writing a Sherlock Holmes mystery. 

 

Or, you can look for completely legal free-to-download versions of books on websites like https://www.gutenberg.org/ or https://weird-old-book-finder.glitch.me/  

 

Those pieces of “art” above (KAJ’s book was actually decent but I’m not so sure about the Steamboat Willie movie...) already exist because those characters came into the public domain in previous years. Here’s a few of the things that are newly available for reference (or see some of the great reporting done about Public Domain Day for 2025): 

• • Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One's Own 
  • Works by Henri Matisse 
  • Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms 
  • Works by Duke Ellington

I’ve been reminded recently that art, music, creativity are all fundamental qualities of being human – and that you don’t have to do them “well” by some external measure in order to enjoy them... the “doing” is what matters. So this 2025, I wish you all inspiration to create something that tickles your own fancies – whether it is inspired by something newly in the Public Domain or not.