On January 1^st 2026, copyrighted works first published in 1930 entered the public domain in the US.¹ There are plenty of articles online about what works are included this year. To name a few, there’s the first Nancy Drew novels, The Maltese Falcon, the first film adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front, and the character Betty Boop.

Works in the public domain have no exclusive rights granted by copyright law – though some specific works are still covered by trademark. So for example, since the first Mickey Mouse cartoon (“Steamboat Willie”) entered the public domain in 2024, you can make and sell your own works (like films, drawings, or clothing) featuring that original version of Mickey, but you cannot do so in a way that confuses buyers into thinking that your work is officially sanctioned by Disney.

If you want a more detailed treatment of copyright law and the public domain, I recommend the posts by the Internet Archive and Duke Law. My goal is to add my perspective as an online creator.

American Gothic: Public domain as of this month

Copyright law today is topsy-turvy

Copyright law in the US is based on our constitution, which grants congress this power:

“To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries”

Right now, copyright law is doing a pretty poor job of living up to this constitutional directive. When I make videos, I have to be careful to respect copyright law. YouTube’s automated systems are notoriously strict with flagging copyrighted clips and music from large copyright holders. I could lose all the income on a particular video if I use a 10-second copyrighted clip from 1931.

But of course, it doesn’t work the other way. If a large company wants to scrape my blog or my videos and use them to (as a completely hypothetical example) train an AI that they’re renting out for money, there’s very little I can do to stop them whether or not it’s illegal on paper.

This is the worst of both worlds. We don’t secure exclusive rights to authors and inventors as a rule – just to those organizations with enough money to file a lawsuit. And at the same time anyone who wants to expand upon our existing culture has to contend with an enormous minefield of potential copyright hazards. There are old books and film reels and records crumbling to dust while archivists wait for their copyrights to expire in order to copy them and save their contents.

All that said, science and useful arts haven’t ground to a halt over this. People constantly violate copyright laws the way they violate speed limits, though the possibility of targeted enforcement is still there.

Maybe the laws will change now that there are powerful corporations whose interest lies in weaker copyrights. The way the world’s going right now, AI companies might just carve out an exemption to the law for themselves and leave the rest of us in the dust.² Or drag this out in court until it no longer matters. But at least for now, we can celebrate a small win, courtesy of 1930.

Coming soon: The government’s $600 billion checking account