Books, films, songs, several emblematic works created 95 years ago enter the public domain in the United States this Wednesday, January 1, 2025. And can therefore be freely copied, shared, reproduced or adapted.
The universal stars of comics Tintin and Popeye, masterpieces of literature, cinema and music by Faulkner, Hemingway, Hitchcock, Ravel – all dated 1929 – enter the American public domain on Wednesday.
Every January 1, thousands of 95-year-old books, films, songs, music, works of art, and comic book characters lose their copyrights in the United States.
Which means they can be freely copied, shared, reproduced or adapted without a penny being paid.
It is the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at the Duke University Law School, in North Carolina (southeast), which makes public the list of cultural works passed down to posterity each year at the end of December.
This January 1, the stars are the sailor Popeye, created in 1929 by the American Elzie Crisler Segar, and the reporter Tintin, presented by the Belgian Hergé the same year.
But only the original version of Tintin, as it appears in Tintin in the Land of the Sovietsmay be exploited in the United States without the authorization of TintinImaginatio, which manages the rights to Hergé’s work.
So alone Tintin in the Land of the Soviets enters the American public domain, the secondary characters of Hergé’s universe, which appear in the following albums, remain protected by Hergé’s rights holders.
After Mickey and Winnie the Pooh
“In recent years, we have celebrated the entry into the public domain of fascinating characters like Mickey Mouse (2024) and Winnie the Pooh (2022),” recalls the director of the Center, Jennifer Jenkins, on her site.
“In 2025, copyrights expire for more incarnations of Mickey dating from 1929 and the first versions of Popeye and Tintin,” says the lawyer.
In Europe, where copyright law expires 70 years after the death of the author of the work, Popeye has already been in the public domain since 2009, because Popeye’s creator, the American screenwriter and cartoonist Elsie Crisler Segar, died in 1938.
The year 1929 was also that of major works of American and European literature, adapted several times for cinema.
The sound and the fury de William Faulkner, Farewell to arms d’Ernest Hemingway, A room of one’s own by the British Virginia Woolf, or the first English translation of In the West, nothing new by the German Erich Maria Note.
These legendary novels also enter the American public domain on Wednesday.
On the cinema side, Duke University retains Blackmail by Alfred Hitchcock, the first British talking film, and The Black Guardby the American John Ford, both released in 1929.
In song and music, the first version of Singin’ in the Rain by the Americans Ignacio Herbert Brown and Arthur Freed, adapted many times, also lost its copyright.
Just like the famous Bolero by Frenchman Maurice Ravel, composed in 1928 but whose copyright dates from the following year.
