January 1, 2019: If you have not thought about the copyright public domain for a while, maybe this is a good time to do so

January 1st of any year is replete with numerous substantive and imagined meanings. For the copyright world, however, there can only be one meaning: it signals the end of copyright protection for works whose copyright duration has or is about to expire. What makes January 1, 2019, particularly interesting is that it marks the first year in which works protected under U.S. copyright law, whose entry into the public domain was stayed for a time under the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 (also known as the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act or, more cynically, the Mickey Mouse Protection Act, since it had the effect of keeping the movie "Steamboat Willie" protected by copyright until 2024), will no longer enjoy that benefit. By virtue of this legislation, works first copyrighted in 1923 or thereafter, which were still protected by copyright in 1998, will enter the public domain in 2019 at the earliest. It did so by extending the term of protection for 20…

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