Even if you’re not one for getting dressed up and going out to ring in the new year, there’s still something to celebrate on Jan. 1: a new batch of copyrighted works entering the public domain. In 2025, the rights to characters, books, plays, movies, drawings, paintings, and photography from 1929, as well as sound recordings from 1924 will expire, meaning that the public (that’s us) can legally copy, share, and build upon them without permission or paying a fee, according to the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke University. Here are some of the highlights.
Notable characters entering the public domain in 2025
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Popeye: E.C. Segar’s strapping sailor man first appeared in “Gobs of Work” in his Thimble Theatre comic strip
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Tintin: The young investigative reporter made his debut in “Les Aventures de Tintin” by Belgian cartoonist Hergé in the magazine Le Petit Vingtième
Notable books and plays entering the public domain in 2025
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William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury
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Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms
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Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own
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Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon (as serialized in Black Mask magazine)
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John Steinbeck’s Cup of Gold (his first novel)
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Arthur Wesley Wheen’s first English translation of All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
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Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials Mystery
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Robert Graves’s Good-bye to All That
Notable films entering the public domain in 2025
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12 more Mickey Mouse cartoons, including Mickey’s first talking appearance in The Karnival Kid (Mickey and Minnie Mouse first entered the public domain this year)
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The Skeleton Dance, directed by Walt Disney and animated by Ub Iwerks (the first Silly Symphony short from Disney)
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Blackmail, directed by Alfred Hitchcock (Hitchcock’s first sound film)
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The Cocoanuts, directed by Robert Florey and Joseph Santley (the first Marx Brothers feature film)
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The Broadway Melody, directed by Harry Beaumont (winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture)
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Hallelujah, directed by King Vidor (the first film from a major studio with an all-Black cast)
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The Hollywood Revue of 1929, directed by Charles Reisner (featuring the song “Singin’ in the Rain”)
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The Wild Party, directed by Dorothy Arzner (Clara Bow’s first talkie)
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Show Boat, directed by Harry A. Pollard (adaptation of the novel and musical)
Notable musical compositions entering the public domain in 2025
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Singin’ in the Rain, lyrics by Arthur Freed, music by Nacio Herb Brown
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Ain’t Misbehavin’, lyrics by Andy Paul Razaf, music by Thomas W. (“Fats”) Waller & Harry Brooks (from the musical Hot Chocolates)
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An American in Paris, George Gershwin
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Bolero, orchestral composition by Maurice Ravel
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(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue, lyrics by Andy Paul Razaf, music by Thomas W. “Fats” Waller & Harry Brooks (a song about racial injustice from the musical Hot Chocolates)
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Tiptoe Through the Tulips, lyrics by Alfred Dubin, music by Joseph Burke (Note: the 1968 recording by Tiny Tim is still copyrighted)
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Happy Days Are Here Again, lyrics by Jack Yellen, music by Milton Ager (the theme song for Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1932 presidential campaign)
Notable sound recordings from 1924 entering the public domain in 2025
For additional works entering the public domain, check out the lists from the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke University and Copyright Lately.
