‘Winnie The Pooh’ and more: 22 notable creative works to be released into the public domain in 2022
A first US edition of Winnie the Pooh signed by author AA Milne and illustrator EH Shepard is presented in London on December 15, 2008. “Winnie the Pooh” and “The Sun Also Rises” are released. AA Milne’s children’s book and Ernest Hemingway’s novel are among the 1926 works whose copyright will expire on January 1, 2022, putting them into the public domain in 2022 (Matt Dunham, Associated Press)
Estimated reading time: 6-7 minutes
SALT LAKE CITY – Winnie and all her friends, from Tigger to Piglet, move into a new home.
New Years Day marks the first day that thousands of classic works of art lose their copyright or intellectual property rights when they enter a collective space known as the public domain. In the United States, literature, music, films and other creations are 95 years old before they can be found in this collection of past art.
The 2022 roster is led by AA Milne’s children’s classic “Winnie the Pooh” and Ernest Hemingway’s debut novel, “The Sun Also Rises”. Hemingway’s first collection of short stories, “In Our Time”, entered the public domain last year.
Another classic children’s character, “Bambi” by Felix Salten, as well as works by Langston Hughes, Dorothy Parker and William Faulkner are also entering the public domain.
But there are a few cinematic gems coming in this year, including Buster Keaton’s “Battling Butler” and “The Son of the Sheik,” the last film from first movie star Rudolph Valentino before his sudden death at the age of 31. year.
All sound recordings published before 1923 also fall into the public domain. It’s the result of interesting public domain rules, according to Jennifer Jenkins, director of the Center for Public Domain Studies at Duke University.
She notes that the country’s copyright law did not include sound recordings until 1972, which means sound recordings could have been included in the 95-year window from 1972. But Congress, in 2018, passed the “Music Modernization Act” which shortened the window for recordings prior to 1972.
This is estimated to include more than 400,000 recordings entering the field in 2022, according to the Association For Recorded Sound Collections. This includes interpretations of the World War I anthem “Over There”, recorded in 1917 and 1918.
Jenkins says there’s a good reason for the public domain. First, it allows community theaters and youth orchestras to learn and perform these plays without having to pay expensive license fees. Thousands of books can be made available in print or online, making them more accessible.
“This provides access to cultural documents that might otherwise be lost in history. 1926 was a long time ago. The vast majority of works from 1926 are no longer in circulation,” Jenkins wrote, in a public domain report. “When they enter the public domain in 2022, anyone can take them out of obscurity and make them available, where we can all discover them, appreciate them and breathe new life into them.”
This annual collection also promotes the emergence of a new art, because current authors, musicians, playwrights, directors and artists can rely on works in the public domain. One of the more recent examples of this is the remake of “West Side Story,” which recently hit theaters. The 1950s musical was influenced by William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”.
“Who knows what could inspire works entering the public domain in 2022? Jenkins adds. “As with Shakespeare, the ability to freely reinvent these works can stimulate a range of creativity, from serious to whimsical, and in so doing, allow the legacy of the original artists to continue.”
Here are 22 notable pieces that will fall into the public domain this year.
Literature
Recordings and compositions of music and spoken word
Movies
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