Public Domain Day gifts | January 1, 2008 | Everybody's Libraries

"Quite the festive day today! All over the world, people who use the Gregorian calendar are celebrating New Year’s Day. Here in Philadelphia, it’s Mummer’s Parade day. And in my church, it’s a special day dedicated to Mary, the mother of Jesus, and to world peace. Much of the world gets to celebrate today as Public Domain Day as well, the day when a whole year’s worth of copyrights enter the public domain for anyone to copy or reuse as they like. In countries that use the “life plus 50 years” minimum standard of the Berne Convention, works by authors who died in 1957 enter the public domain today. That includes writers, artists, and composers like Nikos Kazantzakis, Diego Rivera, Dorothy L. Sayers, Jean Sibelius, and Laura Ingalls Wilder...."