January 1st was Public Domain Day in countries where copyright extends for the life of an author plus a certain number of years (50 in Canada and many other countries, 70 in the US). As a starting place for more information about Public Domain Day and the works that have entered the commons in 2010 check out this blog post on the subject from the Open Knowledge Foundation. Although there was some celebration of Public Domain Day, it is overshadowed by the fact that the 50+ year wait is much too long to sustain a healthy commons.
Fortunately, more and more tools are emerging that allow creators to be proactive in usurping the status quo of copyright term. Projects like One for the Commons (14tc) encourage contemporary artists who already have a Wikipedia page to take the initiative to make their work freely available there through a Creative Commons-supported framework.
One for the Commons is a project designed to facilitate the flow of freely licensed, quality art from the fine arts and design community into the commons. Our goal is to help contemporary artists and creators make sure their work is established online in a sustainable fashion so that others can benefit from and share it. Our means are the Creative Commons public licenses combined with a lightweight website providing an interface to the commons through Wikipedia’s community filter. Our ends are the establishment of a new category of free works existing for the betterment of the arts and culture community.
In a time when new restrictions are likely to emerge for our use and reuse of digital content, projects like 14tc help increase awareness among artists of the active role they can play in fostering cultural innovation by contributing to the public domain. Consider making your addition to the commons today!
Also...
http://worldsfairuseday.org/Worlds_Fair_Use_Day/Worlds_Fair_Use_Day.html
On a related note, there is an event happening today (January 12 2010) called World's Fair Use Day. Check out their site for more info and resources.
"World’s Fair Use Day (WFUD) is a free, all-day celebration of the doctrine of fair use: the legal right that allows innovators and creators to make particular uses of copyrighted materials. WFUD will take place at the Newseum in Washington D.C. on Tuesday January 12, 2010, and will be organized by Public Knowledge (PK), a Washington D.C.-based non-profit, consumer-advocacy group. PK works to ensure that communications and intellectual property policies encourage creativity, further free expression and discourse and provide universal access to knowledge. As part of its campaign to return balance to copyright law, PK hopes to use WFUD to educate the public about the importance of fair use in an information society."