We celebrate the new year in many ways. Perhaps, in terms of access to literature, music and the arts, nothing is more important than Public Domain Day, which occurs annual on January 1. Duke Law School’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain defines public domain as “the realm of material — ideas, images, sounds, discoveries, facts, texts — that is unprotected by intellectual property rights and free for all to use or build upon. It includes our collective cultural and scientific heritage, and the raw materials for future expression, research, democratic dialogue and education.”

What does this mean? Works created in 1929 and sound recordings recorded in 1924 are now part of this vast collection of stuff to read, to view, to listen to and, most importantly, to build upon in ways that traditional copyright severely restricts.

Not everyone sees the public domain as a good thing, hence the reference to items “falling into” the public domain. The past few years have been particularly controversial as the original Disney characters have entered this unregulated territory. Disney is no friend to anything that allows anyone unmitigated access to Mickey, Minnie and the rest of the crew.

I just finished reading A Passage to India by E. M. Forster. My copy came from Project Gutenberg, the repository of public domain books, one of those amazing projects that harnessed the Internet to expand access to the world.

I went looking for this year’s list as one of my LibraryThing challenges is to read something that recently came into the public domain. I think it will be The Maltese Falcon.