Teachers鈥攅specially those of English or the arts鈥攔ely on famous works of literature, music, and film in their classes, copying and repurposing them to analyze with students.
But often, embedding these works in curricula to share with other teachers or making them available to students can raise questions about copyright: How much of an original movie or poem can a teacher include, and how widely can resources made with these materials be distributed?
As of Jan. 1, thousands of works are newly exempt from these questions. At the beginning of 2019, anything that was originally copyrighted in 1923 passed into the public domain鈥攎eaning that anyone can use and reprint it, free of charge and without permission.
Teachers can now post the full text of Robert Frost鈥檚 poem 鈥淪topping by Woods on a Snowy Evening鈥� online for students to access, or organize a community screening of Cecil B. DeMille鈥檚 classic film The Ten Commandments鈥攂oth originally published in 1923鈥攚ithout having to worry that they might be in violation of copyright law. Books by Edith Wharton, P.G. Wodehouse, e.e. cummings, and Virginia Woolf have also cleared the end of their copyright terms, as have two violin sonatas by Bela Bartok.
Why has it taken almost 100 years for these copyrights to expire? In 1999, Congress passed the Copyright Term Extension Act, which . That created a two-decade gap between the works of 1922鈥攚hich passed into the public domain in 1998, before the law was passed鈥攁nd those of 1923.
In the meantime, the rise of online lesson sharing sites has raised thorny copyright issues for teachers. As I wrote recently, some teachers on the lesson marketplace Teachers Pay Teachers are profiting from materials adapted or taken wholesale from other educators. Many teachers may not realize that repurposing another educator鈥檚 work for sale on that site could violate the creator鈥檚 rights, or that they鈥檙e generally infringing copyright by pulling a photo or image from the internet that they don鈥檛 have permission to use.
Of course, even before books, movies, and musical compositions passed into the public domain, teachers looking to reprint and distribute them in part could have claimed fair use鈥攁n exception to copyright law that allows excerpts of protected material to be used for criticism, research, journalism, or teaching without permission or payment. But what counts as fair use is decided in court, and educators could still have faced legal challenges鈥攅specially if they distributed or sold their work to other teachers.
See also: Copyright Confusion Is Shortchanging Our Students (Opinion)
And having these works in the public domain doesn鈥檛 just permit sharing鈥攊t also enables access. These materials can now be digitized and archived online for free, so teachers and schools won鈥檛 necessarily need to buy them in order to use them in class.
Looking for these books, poems, and movies to use in your classroom? Duke University鈥檚 Center for the Study of the Public Domain has listed (and linked to copies of) . And the digital library HathiTrust has that are now freely available.
Photo: Poet Robert Frost shown in 1924. 鈥擜P