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2025 in public domain
Overview of works entering public domain From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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When a work's copyright expires, it enters the public domain. Since laws vary globally, the copyright status of works is not uniform. The following lists list creators whose works entered the public domain in 2025 under the most common copyright regimes.
Countries with life + 80 years
Spain has a copyright term of life + 80 years for creators that died before 1987. In Colombia and Equatorial Guinea, a work enters the public domain 80 years after the creator's death.
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Countries with life + 70 years
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With the exception of Belarus (Life + 50 years) and Spain (which has a copyright term of Life + 80 years for creators that died before 1987), a work enters the public domain in Europe 70 years after the creator's death, if it was published during the creator's lifetime.
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Countries with life + 60 years
In Bangladesh, Haiti, India, and Venezuela a work enters the public domain 60 years after the creator's death.
Countries with life + 50 years
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In most countries of Africa and Asia, as well as Belarus, Bolivia and New Zealand, a work enters the public domain 50 years after the creator's death.
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Russia
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Russia has a copyright term of life + 70 years in general, with two special provisions:
- extra 4 years for those who fought in or worked during the so-called Great Patriotic War in 1941–1945, and/or
- copyright term starting from the date of rehabilitation for unlawfully prosecuted and posthumously rehabilitated.
1954 marks the first large wave of posthumous rehabilitations.
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Australia and Canada
In 2004 copyright in Australia changed from a "plus 50" law to a "plus 70" law, in line with the United States and the European Union. But the change was not made retroactive (unlike the 1995 change in the European Union which brought some (British and possibly other) authors back into copyright, especially those who died from 1925 to 1944). Hence, the work of an author who died before 1955 is normally in the public domain in Australia; but the copyright of authors was extended to 70 years after death for those who died in 1955 or later, and no more Australian authors would come out of copyright until 1 January 2026 (those who died in 1955).[1]
Similarly, Canada amended its Copyright Act in 2022 from a "plus 50" law to a "plus 70" law, coming into force on December 30, 2022, but does not revive expired copyright.[2][3] No more new Canadian authors will come out of copyright until 1 January 2043 (those who died in 1972). Crown copyright was not changed, thus any government works published in 1974 entered the public domain in 2025.[4]
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United States
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Under the Copyright Term Extension Act, books and other works published in 1929 and films released in 1929 entered the public domain in 2025.[5] Sound recordings that were published in 1924 also entered the public domain.[6] The character Captain Easy,[7] Popeye the Sailor Man, Disney's Horace Horsecollar, and Hergé's Tintin entered the public domain through their respective debut appearances in 2025.[8] The same happened for the first Tarzan strips illustrated by Hal Foster[7] and for the character Buck Rogers, whose first comic strips also appeared in U.S. newspapers in 1929.
Notable musical works entering the public domain include George Gershwin's composition An American in Paris and the first recordings of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.
Among the popular songs that entered the public domain in 2025 are the following:
- "Ain't Misbehavin'"
- "Can't We Be Friends?"
- "Honeysuckle Rose"
- "I Guess I'll Have to Change My Plan"
- "Just You, Just Me"
- "Liza (All the Clouds'll Roll Away)"
- "More Than You Know"
- "Singin' in the Rain"
- "Stardust" (1929 version with words by Mitchell Parish)
- "What Is This Thing Called Love?"
- "With a Song in My Heart"
- "Without a Song"
Unpublished works whose authors died in 1954 entered the public domain in 2025.
Among the films that entered public domain in 2025 are the following:
- The Cocoanuts, the first film of the Marx Brothers
- The Broadway Melody, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's first musical film and the second recipient of the Academy Award for Best Picture, making it the first sound film to win the award.
- The Hollywood Revue, MGM's second musical film, starring Conrad Nagel and Jack Benny.
- Say It with Songs, the first all-talking film starring Al Jolson
- Spite Marriage, Buster Keaton's final full-length feature as a director
- Welcome Danger, Harold Lloyd's first sound film
- On with the Show!, the first sound film in color
- Hallelujah, one of the first films with an all-African American cast produced by a major studio
- The Cock-Eyed World, sequel to What Price Glory? (1926)
- Show Boat, containing some songs from the 1927 musical
- Blackmail, Alfred Hitchcock's first sound film and the first British sound film
- The Black Watch, John Ford's first sound film
- Dynamite, Cecil B. DeMille's first sound film
- Eternal Love, John Barrymore's last silent film
- The Virginian, Gary Cooper's and Victor Fleming's first sound film
- Where East Is East, last collaboration between Lon Chaney and Tod Browning
- Atlantic, the first sound film about the Titanic disaster
- The Return of Sherlock Holmes, the first sound film to star the titular detective
- Behind That Curtain, the first sound film to star the character Charlie Chan
- The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu, the first sound film to star the titular Chinese villain
- Bulldog Drummond, the first sound film to star the character of the same name
- The Three Masks (Les trois masques), the first French sound film
- Land Without Women (Das Land ohne Frauen), the first German sound film
- Woman in the Moon (Frau im Mond), directed by Fritz Lang
- Pandora’s Box (Die Büchse der Pandora) and Diary of a Lost Girl (Tagebuch einer Verlorenen), both directed by G. W. Pabst and starring Louise Brooks
- The White Hell of Pitz Palu (Die weiße Hölle vom Piz Palü), directed by Arnold Fanck and G. W. Pabst and starring Leni Riefenstahl
- Drifters, a documentary film about Britain's North Sea herring fishery
- Un Chien Andalou, directed by Luis Buñuel and cowritten by Salvador Dalí
- The Mysteries of the Chateau of Dice (Les mystères du Château du Dé), directed by Man Ray
- Rain, a Dutch documentary short directed by Joris Ivens
- Sound versions of the Mickey Mouse cartoons The Gallopin' Gaucho and Plane Crazy, the 1929 cartoons including The Karnival Kid (in which Mickey speaks his first words); and the first Silly Symphony cartoons, including The Skeleton Dance.
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Examples of important literary works entering the public domain include Ernest Hemingway's novel A Farewell to Arms, William Seabrook's novel The Magic Island (the first book to introduce the concept of a zombie). Ellery Queen's detective novel The Roman Hat Mystery, Margery Allingham's detective novel The Crime at Black Dudley, the first English translation of Erich Maria Remarque's novel All Quiet on the Western Front, Alfred Döblin's novel Berlin Alexanderplatz in its original German, Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay's novel Pather Panchali in its original Bengali, Lynd Ward's wordless novel Gods' Man, William Faulkner's novel The Sound and the Fury, Dashiell Hammett's novel Red Harvest, Edgar Rice Burroughs's novel Tarzan and the Lost Empire, Ruth Plumly Thompson's novel Jack Pumpkinhead of Oz, Bertrand Russell's book Marriage and Morals, Patrick Hamilton's play Rope, A. A. Milne's play Toad of Toad Hall, Virginia Woolf's essay A Room of One's Own, Ludwig Wittgenstein's essay Some Remarks on Logical Form and the first part of the 14th edition of Encyclopædia Britannica (full in public domain by 2029).
Important artworks entering the public domain include Salvador Dalí's paintings The Great Masturbator and The Accommodations of Desire, Wassily Kandinsky's painting Upward, Edward Hopper's painting Chop Suey, Kawamura Kiyoo's painting Founding of the Nation, Julio Romero de Torres' painting La Fuensanta, M. C. Escher's print Strada di Scanno, the first design of the Barcelona chair and August Sander's photograph Berlin Coal Carrier and other photographs from his 1929 photobook Face of our Time. The public domain status of René Magritte's painting The Treachery of Images is contentious.[needs update][9]
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See also
- List of American films of 1929
- 1954 in literature and 1974 in literature for deaths of writers
- Public Domain Day
- Creative Commons
References
External links
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