2025 marks a milestone: all of the books, films, songs, and art published in the 1920s will now be public domain. The literary highlights from 1929 include The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner, A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, and A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf. In film, Mickey Mouse speaks his first words, the Marx Brothers star in their first feature film, and legendary directors from Alfred Hitchcock to John Ford made their first sound films. From comic strips, the original Popeye and Tintin characters will enter the public domain. Among the newly public domain compositions are Gershwin’s An American in Paris, Ravel’s Bolero, Fats Waller’s Ain’t Misbehavin’, and the musical number Singin’ in the Rain. Below is just a handful of the works that will be in the US public domain in 2025.
I'm among many people who absorbs joy from "Public Domain Day" each January 1, because it's a celebration of human creativity and the reason our Constitution makes a point of encouraging it – "[t]o 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.” Greed has turned those "limited times" into nearly unlimited ones, especially in copyright, giving a cartel of giant entertainment companies a windfall they manifestly do not deserve. Patents (protection for inventors) have become a twisted game as well, favoring corporate giants and keeping vital discoveries out of public hands far longer than the founders intended.
Public Domain Day marks art's liberation from corporate copyright control – with vast numbers of creative works available for anyone to download, republish, remix, and in general do anything they choose. The Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke University issues an annual listing of the ones that are most likely to reach the eyes, ears, and emotions of the public in their liberation. Have a read through the list, and then go to places like the Internet Archive, Project Gutenberg and other repositories of culture and art – to download at your legal pleasure. Treat yourself what you have been missing. (Take a look at Standard Ebooks' picks of 20 great books from the 1920s, wonderfully formatted versions of Project Gutenberg volumes and including works from John Steinbeck, Sinclair Lewis, Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett, William Faulkner, and more.)
The references above are all to U.S. works now in the public domain. Because copyright laws vary globally, with shorter terms in some other countries – something the American entertainment cartel is determined to "fix" in its favor – some works have already been liberated. The UK-based Public Domain Review looks more globally each Jan. 1. Have a look.
Breaking its previous record by flying just 3.8 million miles above the surface of the sun, NASA's Parker Solar Probe hurtled through the solar atmosphere at a blazing 430,000 miles per hour—faster than any human-made object has ever moved. A beacon tone received late on Dec. 26 confirmed the spacecraft had made it through the encounter safely and is operating normally. This pass, the first of more to come at this distance, allows the spacecraft to conduct unrivaled scientific measurements with the potential to change our understanding of the sun.
An end-of-year gift to the people of Earth arrived via NASA's amazing Parker Solar Probe, which survived the first of a series of record-close encounters with the sun. The new year will feature some of the most intensive scientific observation of the star that makes our lives possible but which we understand in limited ways. There are reasons to worry that the Trump regime, heavily indebted to Elon Musk, will focus the nation's space program even more on his company. But the science part of space exploration – as opposed to the purely engineering part (though the solar probe's engineering is just astonishing) – is essential to our futures in ways that no commercial space outfits will either care about or be able to fulfill. Three cheers for NASA, and may it continue to do great science like this.
It is hard to compete with Woody Guthrie’s timeless list of New Year resolutions from 1943, which includes these ever-relevant goals:
Work more and better. Read lots of good books. Keep hoping machine running. Help win war – beat fascism. Wake up and fight.
The list that follows this Framelab introduction is a fine set of brief suggestions. Each of them deserves to be examined in depth. I trust the site will do that in coming months, and I know I will be on the lookout for ways you can put some or all of them into deeper effect in your own life. You'll find your own favorite in the list. Maybe it'll be the final suggestion:
This newsletter is a compendium of the reporting and commentary that best explains the America's political, economic, and social conditions – and, most important, how we can find a way back from the dark days ahead. You will rarely find anything here from the New York Times or Washington Post or any of the other Big Journalism companies that failed us so completely during the 2024 elections and are now sucking up – even more than usual – to Donald Trump, his cult, and corporate oligarchs. My focus will be on smaller, more honorable outlets (and individuals). I hope you'll support them with your attention and your money. For more details, please read my About page.
Please send your suggestions
I spend a lot of time looking for essential coverage, and hope you'll help me by letting me know about the good stuff you find. Let me know.
Subscribe
Was this forwarded to you? If you would like to have your own free subscription, please click here.
Mara Johnson-Groh
George Lakoff
