WASHINGTON — "Winnie the Pooh" and "The Sun Also Rises" are going public.
A.A. Milne's beloved children's book and Ernest Hemingway's classic novel, along with films starring Buster Keaton and Greta Garbo are among the works from 1926 whose copyrights will expire Saturday, putting them in the public domain as the calendar flips to 2022.
Poetry collections "The Weary Blues" by Langston Hughes and "Enough Rope" by Dorothy Parker will also turn 95 and enter the public domain under U.S. law.
READ MORE: 8 quotes to celebrate Langston Hughes on his 113th birthday
The silent films "Battling Butler" starring and directed by Buster Keaton, "The Temptress" starring Greta Garbo, "The Son of the Sheik" starring Rudolph Valentino, and "For Heaven's Sake" starring Harold Lloyd are also becoming public property.
And under 2018 legislation by Congress, sound recordings from the earliest area of electronic audio will become available.
Copyright experts at Duke University estimate that some 400,000 sound recordings from before 1923 will become available for public use, including music from Ethel Waters, Mamie Smith, Enrico Caruso and Fanny Brice.
READ MORE: How the public domain offers new life to these poetry classics
Once a work enters the public domain it can legally be shared, performed, reused, repurposed or sampled without permission or cost.
The long U.S. copyright period adopted in recent decades has meant that many works that would now become available have long since been lost, because they were not profitable to maintain by the legal owners, but couldn't be used by others.
"The fact that works from 1926 are legally available does not mean they are actually available," Jennifer Jenkins, director of Duke's Center for the Study of the Public Domain, said in a post celebrating Saturday's "Public Domain Day." "After 95 years, many of these works are already lost or literally disintegrating (as with old films and recordings), evidence of what long copyright terms do to the conservation of cultural artifacts."
Sustain our coverage of culture, arts and literature.
In death, Leonard Cohen is having a rebirth. The legendary singer is being remembered by older and younger generations alike…
Alec Baldwin's Western "Rust" had its world premiere Wednesday at a film festival in Poland, three years after the shooting…
In her new collection of columns from The Wall Street Journal, Pulitzer Prize-winner Peggy Noonan takes readers on a journey…
If you've ever wanted to own a piece of Hollywood history, now's your chance. A pair of Dorothy's ruby slippers…
When Centurion was founded, it was the first group of its kind working to overturn wrongful convictions for people facing…
As major American museums reexamine their collections to ensure diversity and inclusion, there's a growing realization that they need more…
As a dancer, choreographer, director and speaker, Jamison's distinguished career leaped over barriers of race and gender.
In the 1980s, about 70 percent of clothes sold in the U.S. were made in the country. Today, it's down…
This is her first time receiving nominations in the country and Americana categories.
For many Muslim and Arab Americans, Israel's wars in Gaza, Lebanon, and the wider Middle East are personal, and so…
A giant in the music and entertainment industry has died. Quincy Jones, known to many as 'Q,' was revered as…
Jones rose from music school dropout to the very heights of show business, becoming one of the first Black executives…
Kamala Harris made a surprise appearance on "Saturday Night Live" in the final days before the presidential election, playing herself…
During the final days of this tense election, we take a look at a project fostering a different type of…
