On January 1, 2026, a new batch of creative works published in 1930 lost their U.S. copyright protection and entered the public domain, meaning anyone can now freely copy, adapt, or republish them. Duke Law School's Center for the Study of the Public Domain, which has tracked the annual release for years, called this year's crop especially notable.
Literary highlights include William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, Agatha Christie's first Miss Marple novel The Murder at the Vicarage, and the original edition of the first Nancy Drew mystery, The Secret of the Old Clock, according to Duke's annual list. The animation world also saw milestones, with the earliest Betty Boop cartoon appearances and Disney's Pluto (originally named Rover) among the newly free characters, as reported by CBS News.
The release isn't without complications. Fleischer Studios, which controls later Betty Boop rights and trademarks, publicly clarified that only the character's original 1930 appearance is affected — modern depictions and trademarked uses remain protected. Foreign works face separate timelines entirely: as the Public Domain Review notes, countries using a "life plus 70 years" copyright term instead freed works by authors who died in 1955, a completely different list from the U.S. release.
For readers, the practical effect is straightforward: public-domain books can legally be found for free through archives like Project Gutenberg, and readers can check any title's status themselves using our guide on how to check whether a book is in the public domain.
Sources: Duke Law Center for the Study of the Public Domain, CBS News.