These are some of the books that are now considered to be in the US public domain:

These are some of the books that are now considered to be in the US public domain:
Last month, I was talking about how the rapid expansion of public domain songs and films (and books, too, but I hadn’t got around to writing about that yet) represents a great opportunity to repurpose content for entertainment.
I was fooling around with ChatGPT tonight to rewrite some public domain songs, and make them something fresh and new, and it didn’t disappoint. This is so cool.
So here is “Lady Be Good” by the Gershwin brothers:
and here is how ChatGPT used it to write an entirely new song:
So that one was alright. But the next one is lights out. Here is “I’ll See You in my Dreams” by Gus Kahn & Isham Jones:
here is what ChatGPT wrote:
There will be a lot of entertainment content generated by artificial intelligence in this way. It’s just too easy to do and the results are clearly quality results.
So I already discussed that songs published before 1927 are in the US public domain.
The same holds true for films. While many interesting 1920’s movies are already in the public domain, in my opinion it’s only in 2023 that we really start cooking.
That’s because the first sound movies with significant dialogue started in 1927, and all of those 1,000+ movies will enter US public domain in 2023. Notable 1927 films include:
Again, this is a rabbit hole I’m planning on investigating over the next few years.
(Don’t forget that four Three Stooges shorts are already in the public domain. )