I know it's not public domain per-say, but for me, the thing that's most exciting is that in 2025, the last remaining patents on the h.264 (AVC) video codec will expire [1].

Now if only HEVC wasn't such a hot patent / licensing mess.

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Have_the_patents_for_H.264_M...

It's advent calendar-style, so <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_in_public_domain> might be more informative.

Previous civilizations were able to own their cultural myths. Modern civilization's cultural myths are controlled by giant faceless corporations with legions of lawyers. No one can tell a new story about Han, Luke, and Leia without permission from the House of Mouse.

Unfortunately, public domain isn't everything. There are lots of works that we know of and that we should be able to share with one another, but it's hard to come by copies. To give one example:

The novel Red Harvest from 1929 is listed as entering the public domain next month. But the thing is that prior to being published as a novel, it was serialized in Black Mask magazine, and since all installments were published pre-1929, they're all already in the public domain.

The trouble, though, is that despite being public domain, actually getting your hands on these issues, whether in real life or figuratively as scans is something that poses a challenge—we simply don't have easy access to this material.

And that goes for lots of other stuff that we know about but don't have copies at hand.

As is usual there is quite a bit of discussion here on copyright reform, which is mostly just suggestions to change the term of copyright.

I think it would be interesting to consider other reforms.

Note that copyright is not just a single right. It is a bundle of rights. In the US those are the copying right, the derivative work right, the distribution right, the performance right, the display right, and some others. The bundle of rights might be different in other jurisdictions but in most it is similar. In the rest of this comment I'll only be consideringd US copyright.

First, I don't see why all of those rights should all have the same term. I see no reason to believe that the optimal term for say the copying right and the optimal term for the derivative work right would be the same.

Second, how about adding more compulsory licenses? US copyright law already has some compulsory licenses (also called mechanical licenses), such as for cover songs. Briefly, a federal agency called the Copyright Royalty Board sets the terms and rates for these licenses, and anyone can obtain the license according to those rates and terms, regardless of whether or not the copyright owner wants to license the work to them.

For example suppose we made it so that the copying and distribution rights have a three phase lifetime instead of the current two phases (which are an exclusive phase tied to the author's lifetime followed by public domain). The three phase lifetime could be (1) an exclusive phase of a fixed number of years, followed by (2) a compulsory license phase, followed by (3) public domain.

The derivative work right is the hard one. On the one hand a short term allows others to play in an author's universe. I've seen some really good and really well written fan fiction that is not currently technically legal, especially crossover fan fiction that merges the story universes of different authors. Encouraging this would be good.

On the other hand some things would be ruined if they became public domain too quickly. I'm quite pleased that Bill Watterson still gets to decide who can make "Calvin & Hobbes" derivative works. If copyright was only 14 or 21 years (terms people often suggest), I've no doubt that every character from "Calvin & Hobbes" would have started appearing in ads as soon as the copyright expired.