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Poster:	Alison OK	Date:	Jan 28, 2019 2:05pm
Forum:	news	Subject:	Hyperallergic: How the Re-Opening of the Public Domain “Has Allowed Us to Have Our Culture Back”

Many of the people at the Internet Archive, a converted church in San Francisco’s Sunset District, felt like celebrating. There were men in old-fashioned suits and flat straw boaters and women wearing vintage dresses and flowered hats. Along with coffee, tea, and Chex mix, there were big glass jars full of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.

The significance of the candy was the year it came out: 1923. As of this January, all works from that year entered the public domain, meaning that thousands of visual artworks, books, plays, films, sheet music, and plays published 96 years ago won’t have intellectual property restrictions, and anyone can use them for whatever they want — set a poem to music, remix a song, produce a high school play, remake a movie. Some of the works include Henri Matisse’s “Odalisque With Raised Arms,” Cane, Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw, the cartoon Felix the Cat, the German silent comedy The Little Napoleon with Marlene Dietrich in her film debut, and the song, “Yes! We Have No Bananas.”

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