Among the cartoon characters, the first versions of the dog Pluto and Betty Boop, at the cinema The Blue Angel with Marlene Dietrich and, among the books, The Maltese Falcon, a hard-boiled crime novel by the American writer Dashiell Hammett: published in five installments on the pages of the Black Mask magazine, it was published for the first time in a single volume in 1930 by the Knopf publishing house, and like all the works produced in that same year from January 1st will be free from copyright.
The legal expiration is 95 years
This means that characters and stories produced or recorded in 1930 can be reproduced – on page, stage or screen – without asking permission from the authors’ heirs and for commercial purposes. Accompanying the hound Pluto (at the time he was called Rover) and Betty Boop will be nine new Mickey Mouse cartoons, while on the front of the written page will be ‘liberated’ As I Lay Dying, a Southern Gothic novel by William Faulkner in turn inspired by Homer’s Odyssey and the first novel in the Miss Marple series by Agatha Christie, Murder at the Vicarage, which in Italy was released by Mondadori three years later with the title Assassinio Nella Rectory. Thinking of children and teenagers, it will be possible to reuse an illustrated version of the fairy tale The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper and the first four novels of the teen detective Nancy Drew published under the collective pseudonym of Carolyn Keene.
Free sound recordings after 100 years
The sound recordings enter the public domain after 100 years, thus ‘liberating’ 1925 hits including Marian Anderson’s Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen and Bessie Smith’s recording of St. Louis Blues with Louis Armstrong. Reusable musical compositions include Georgia on My Mind by Stuart Gorrell and Hoagy Carmichael, Dream a Little Dream of Me, made famous by Ella Fitzgerald and Armstrong himself, and four songs by Ira and George Gershwin: I Got Rhythm, I’ve Got a Crush on You, But Not for Me and Embraceable You.
Public domain “All Quiet on the Western Front”
As for cinema, in addition to Dietrich’s films (in addition to The Blue Angel which made her a world-famous diva, Morocco with the kissing scene with Gary Cooper), the 1930 version of All Quiet on the Western Front (from the novel by Erich Maria Remarque) and Animal Crackers by the Marx Brothers enter the public domain.
As in recent years, the release from copyright allows contemporary authors to indulge themselves freely on iconic materials of the past without worrying about the needs of those who hold the rights: after the horror versions inspired by Peter Pan, Bambi, Winnie The Pooh and Popeye, another horror film based on the first Betty Boop, initially inspired by an anthropomorphic dog and whose hoop earrings in subsequent versions were originally dog ears, is already in the works for release in 2026.