January 1st is not only New Year’s Day but it is also “Public Domain Day” – the day on which works whose copyright has expired enter the public domain.  However, the U.S. law has changed over the years to lengthen the period of time a copyright restricts usage to others.  Prior to the 1976 Copyright Act (passed in 1978), works could be copyrighted for a period of 28 years from the author’s death, with a single renewal for another 28 years for a total of 56 years of protection.  Here are some candidates that would be moved into the public domain, had their copyright been renewed and the old law still in place:

• Golding’s Lord of the Flies
• Tolkein’s The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers
• Beckett’s Waiting for Godot
• Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who
• Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Movies such as:

• On the Waterfront, directed by Elia Kazan; starring Marlon Brando, Eva Marie Saint, Rod Steiger, Karl Malden, and Lee J. Cobb
• Director Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, starring James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Raymond Burr, and Thelma Ritter
• The original Japanese-language release of Seven Samurai, directed by Akira Kurasawa; starring Takashi Shimura and Toshirō Mifune
• Dial M for Murder, directed by Hitchcock; starring Ray Milland, Grace Kelly, and Robert Cummings
• Disney’s 20000 Leagues Under the Sea, starring Kirk Douglas and James Mason
• The cult horror classic, Creature from the Black Lagoon
• White Christmas, starring Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, and Vera Allen, featuring songs by Irving Berlin
• Brigadoon, with Gene Kelly, Van Johnson, and Cyd Charisse; from the Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe musical

This is, of course, dependent on the renewals being in place and some other nuances of copyright law.  It would be interesting to see the entertainment industry and what they could do with the sort of breadth that would be available to them. What would be really scary is the Castle’s interpretation of some of these:

• Director ‘Puter’s Rear Window, starring Cartman, Brad Pitt and Raymond Burr (digitally enhanced)
• Mandarin’s 20000 Leagues Under the Sea – trust me, the ending is completely different with his orbiting weather and ocean controlling satellites
• Volgi’s Fellowship of the Yeti and The Two Vampires
• The Czar’s Seven Hello Kitty Samurai
• GorT’s Lord of the 8th Temporal Dimension

GorT

GorT is an eight-foot-tall robot from the 51ˢᵗ Century who routinely time-travels to steal expensive technology from the future and return it to the past for retroinvention. The profits from this pay all the Gormogons’ bills, including subsidizing this website. Some of the products he has introduced from the future include oven mitts, the Guinness widget, Oxy-Clean, and Dr. Pepper. Due to his immense cybernetic brain, GorT is able to produce a post in 0.023 seconds and research it in even less time. Only ’Puter spends less time on research. GorT speaks entirely in zeros and ones, but occasionally throws in a ڭ to annoy the Volgi. He is a massive proponent of science, technology, and energy development, and enjoys nothing more than taking the Czar’s more interesting scientific theories, going into the past, publishing them as his own, and then returning to take credit for them. He is the only Gormogon who is capable of doing math. Possessed of incredible strength, he understands the awesome responsibility that follows and only uses it to hurt people.