Print

[Andrew999]

Whole heap of stuff enters the public domain today, including anything by George Orwell, Edgar Rice Burroughs and anything published in Canada by Erle Stanley Gardner (yes, that means millions of Perry Mason books) and EM Forster

American movies include Phantom of the Opera, She, the Gold Rush, Battleship Potemkin, the Lost World, the Monster, Seven Keys to Baldpate and the somehow appropriate Lovers in Quarantine - though of course many of these have been available through video sharing for some time.

For the full story of how the public, mostly unawares, were cheated (in the States since 1978) and Europe since 1993 (when most countries added twenty years to the Berne Convention) read here:

https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2021/

Also, note that under the old rules 85% of creators failed to update copyright when required. This suggests that maybe 85% of works up to 1992 would not be contested if shared through social media (I guess the secret would be to keep away from the big corporations and stick to small independents who have come and gone.) - though goodness me, I'm not suggesting anyone should do anything underhand like that.

For the latest on Stateside copyright law:

https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2021/shrinking/

[The Australian Panther]

Thank you for this information.
As for Erle Stanley Gardner the non-Perry Mason works are more interesting and there are quite a few of them.
Unlike Burroughs, Agatha Christie and a few others, he never had a group or family looking after hi interests,
so his work has been sadly neglected. Much of it difficult to find. Now there is a new Perry Mason TV series, I would expect that property to be looked after pretty well. Edgar Rice Burroughs is out of copyright? I'll believe that when I see it. 
   

[Andrew999]

What it means is that anything ERB wrote himself can be shared without fear. There are some riders: for example, if the book/magazine from which you are reproducing the text is post-1925, that might include something copyrighted, an introduction maybe.

That's not the same as trademark. It's still impossible to write a new Tarzan or John Carter story and profit from it without the permission of the owners of those trademarks.

A lot of ERB's work, by the way, is already available on Canadian websites like fadedpage and project gutenberg canada.

Meanwhile, here's some interesting stuff on the comic strips that become available as of last Friday:

https://www.dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2021/01/02/new-for-21-1925-is-public-domain/

[The Australian Panther]

Well, lets hope our kind-hearted scanners are able to supply some of these. Could be a great year.

[OtherEric]

What it means is that anything ERB wrote himself can be shared without fear. There are some riders: for example, if the book/magazine from which you are reproducing the text is post-1925, that might include something copyrighted, an introduction maybe.

That's not the same as trademark. It's still impossible to write a new Tarzan or John Carter story and profit from it without the permission of the owners of those trademarks.

Not exactly true; you can use the characters and the elements included in the public domain stories fairly freely.  It's putting their names on the the cover or otherwise using them in promotion that's the problem; so in practice you probably want a good lawyer if you're trying to do something for profit.

It's worth noting that not everything by Burroughs is PD in the US yet, as I understand it... we have weird rules for stuff published before a certain date.  So some of his stuff went into the PD a long time ago here and some of it won't for several years yet.