Happy Public Domain Day!

On the first of January 2012 many works will enter into the public domain in many jurisdictions; that means you can remix those works freely, usually even without citing the original author (although we think if you do appreciate their work, it's good sports to name them) without getting sued. Thus the first of January each year has been established not only as New Year's Eve, but also as Public Domain Day since some years.

If you are eager to remix some of these works, we suggest to lookup the copyright expiry date for works in your jurisdiction, e.g. at Wikipedia. As of today a lot of countries are basing the copyright term expiry date by the year the author died, you may then lookup who died in the respective year, e.g. 1941.

We all whish you a happy new year (given you are using the Gregorian calendar). The video embedded below has been created by the Pirate Party of Australia where all works by authors that died in 1941 will become public domain.

Details on the authors of the remixed works can be found on Vimeo.com where the video was originally published.

Update: Thanks to mauron from PP-FR for sending us an ogv and pointing out that the mp4 uses a patented non-free technology! We will try to prevent using such software-patented technology in future posts alltogether. We updated this article accordingly.