What Has The 1923 Hit “Yes! We Have No Bananas,”

got in common with Cecil B. DeMille’s original The Ten Commandments?

 in a slew of books, films and other published works you will be able to publish and even make copies of them without fear of copyright laws effecting you, at midnight on New Year’s Eve, all works first published in the United States in 1923 will enter the public domain, it has been 21 years since the last mass expiration of copyright in the U.S.

for instance the expiration of copyright in the U.S. means that poems, an essay and the novel like A Lost Lady by Willa Cather will enter the public domain on January 1, 2019. (Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial and Educational Foundation), “The public domain has been frozen in time for 20 years, and we’re reaching the 20-year thaw,” says Jennifer Jenkins, director of Duke Law School’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain. The release is unprecedented, and its impact on culture and creativity could be huge. We have never seen such a mass entry into the public domain in the digital age. The last one—in 1998, when 1922 slipped its copyright bond—predated Google. “We have shortchanged a generation,” said Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive. “The 20th century is largely missing from the internet.” for more about this momentous release of copyright material have a look here at this article from the Smithsonian.