On January 1, 2019 in the United States, hundreds of thousands of new works will join iconic creations such as Katsushika Hokusai's Under the Wave off Kanagawa, pictured above, as a part of the public domain.

Please join us on January 25, 2019 for a grand day celebrating the public domain! Co-hosted by the Internet Archive and Creative Commons, this celebration will feature a keynote address by Lawrence Lessig, lightning talks, demos, multimedia displays and more to mark the “re-opening” of the public domain in the United States. The event will take place at the Internet Archive in San Francisco, and is free and open to the public

The public domain is our shared cultural heritage, a near limitless trove of creativity that’s been reused, remixed, and reimagined over centuries to create new works of art and science.

Ever since the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act, no new works have entered the public domain (well, none due to copyright expiration). But for the first time this January, hundreds of books, films, visual art, sheet music, and plays published in 1923 will be free of intellectual property restrictions, and anyone can use them for any purpose.

Join the creative, legal, library, advocacy communities to celebrate and network with an amazing group of people and organizations welcoming in this new class of public domain works. Presenters include Larry Lessig, academic, political activist, and founder of Creative Commons; Corynne McSherry, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation; Cory Doctorow, science fiction author and co-editor of Boing Boing,; Pam Samuelson, copyright scholar; Jamie Boyle, the man who literally wrote the book on the public domain, and many others.

In the evening, the celebration continues as we transition to Yerba Buena Center for the Arts for the World Premiere of Paul D. Miller, aka DJ Spooky’s Quantopia: The Evolution of the Internet, a live concert synthesizing data and art, both original and public domain materials, in tribute to the depth and high stakes of free speech and creative expression involved in our daily use of media. When you register for our Grand Re-Opening of the Public Domain we will send you a Special Discount Code for 20% off the regular ticket price for Quantopia.

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"The Prophet" by Kahlil Gibran is one of the hundreds of thousands of books, musical scores and films that enter the public domain on January 1, 2019.