Happy Public Domain Day 2026!

by Valentino Giudice on

This blog post is dedicated to the public domain through CC0.

I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.

Today, the 1st of January, is Public Domain Day, when we celebrate a new batch of works entering the public domain and becoming free for all to build upon, promoting progress, culture and creativity.

My first blog post on Public Domain Day was in 2024. My second in 2025. This is my third one. I’ve only published one post besides the PDD one in 2025, as was the case in 2024, despite my intention, stated and real, to publish more.

Tom Lehrer

Musician, singer-songwriter, satirist and mathematician Tom Lehrer has died on the 26th of July 2025, leaving behind a rich artistic legacy. This blog post is dedicated to him.

He had placed all of his songs into the public domain, irrevocably relinquishing all copyrights to lyrics or music written or composed by him and abandoing, surrendering and disclaming all right, title and interest in and to his work, injecting any and all copyrights into the public domain.

His repertoire notably includes The Elements, arranged the music of the song from the tune of I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General from The Pirates of Penzance by Gilbert and Sullivan, and New Math, among several others.

For avoidance of doubt, his permission includes performing and recording rights (regarded not as “copyright”, but as “related rights” outside the United States), as well as translation rights are also included.

Regardless of the legal effectiveness of his decision, which I will discuss in the next section, I commend his generosity.

Beware of public domain songs

The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers and Broadcast Music, Inc. are the two leading US performance rights organizations collecting royalties on behalf of their members. The activities of ASCAP and BMI in the United States are constrained by Antitrust consent decrees.

The consent decrees prohibit exclusive licensing and protect the ability of ASCAP and BMI members to license works directly if they wish. When members do enter into direct licences, they are required to notify their organization. If they do not, however, that is arguably a matter between them and the organization (possibly a contract violation). Given no exclusive right has been transferred, failure to notify should not hinge upon the validity of the licence itself for the user.

For reference, ASCAP is the organization whose president and chairman, Paul Williams, once sent a disgracefully misinformed letter to its members, riddled with patently false claims, attacking Creative Commons, Public Knowledge, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and asking for donations for its Legislative Fund for the Arts political action committee. Creative Commons responded, as did the EFF, PK and also some of ASCAP’s own members. That didn’t stop Paul Williams, as leader of the organization which wants to be paid when your phone rings, from doubling down with an equally misinformed public statement from the organization, showing a complete lack of understanding even the simplest and most basic information, but a strong will to just confabulate and make things up. He described Lawrence Lessig, founder of Creative Commons, as “founding leader of the copyleft movement” (no existing movement self-describes as such, but it was Richard Stallman, not Lessig, who first conceived and promoted copyleft, as part of the free software movement), a movement which was supposedly “mobilizing to undermine the copyright protections on which [their] members rely to earn a livelihood from their creative works”, rejecting the chance of a debate with him, while publicly lamenting that they were trying to silence him. Rather than silencing him, Creative Commons responded once again. This should exemplify the standard of behaviour we can expect of ASCAP.

It must be noted that any aspect of interest of the ASCAP and BMI consent decrees only applies in the United States, excluding licensing outside the US from their scope. The two organizations don’t collect royalties outside the United States directly. Instead, both ASCAP and BMI have a network of affiliated foreign societies.

The Italian Society of Authors and Publishers is an Italian collecting society. SIAE is granted special governmental roles and powers and used to have a de jure monopoly on collective music licensing. Its members have to obtain a licence to their own works from the society if they wish to perform them publicly, unless they have properly limited their protection. SIAE partners with 186 societies across the world, including, of course, ASCAP and BMI.

According to a directive of the European Union, rightholders shall have the right to grant licences for non-commercial uses and collective management organisation shall inform them of any conditions attached to this right (but the directive is not clear about any limits to such conditions). In Italy, subject to certain conditions, SIAE, as prescribed by law, allows its members to grant direct licences for non-commercial purposes. Those who do must promptly notify SIAE.

What is not clear at all is whether, how and under what conditions ASCAP or BMI members from the United States can grant a direct licence to their music for use in the European Union.

If, in Italy, music controlled by an associated organization is used in a public performance, SIAE will demand royalties for that use, even if it is covered by a direct licence from the rightholder, including any public licence. For example, using songs by Purrple Cat, although they are clearly, prominiently and unequivocally marked as being licensed under a free and open Creative Commons licence which expressly allows public performances, will trigger a payment demand by SIAE, as if that licence didn’t exist at all and the songs were controlled by SIAE itself, all because the author is a BMI member. This is true even for non-commercial uses by non-profit organizations.

When public copyright licences cannot be relied upon, regardless of the intentions of the rightholder, they become hazards.

A public domain dedication is the same as an unconditional and all-permissive public licence. Tom Lehrer was an ASCAP member and his songs are controlled by ASCAP, including The Elements and New Math. Maelstrom Music and the Tom Lehrer Trust 2007 are merely him in another hat, but ASCAP is not. Using his works in accordance with his copyright disclaimer may simply not be safe in Italy and in the European Union at large.

To resolve this unfortunate situation, it is necessary that ASCAP removes Tom Lehrer’s works from its catalogue, which they would only do upon a request by his successors. That would finally free his legacy from legal tangles and restrictions, as was his wish.

Music for which copyright has expired is safe to use without a licence. The Mutopia Project offers sheet music editions of classical music for free download. These are based on works in the public domain, typesetted by volunteers using the free and open source LilyPond software and are available in PDF, MIDI, and editable LilyPond file formats. Many contributors dedicate their contribution to the public domain. The project also features modern editions. The Public Domain Information Project by Haven Sound provides information about copyright and the public domain, with a focus on music, as well as a list of public domain songs.

Contemporary music which is actually in the public domain does exist, but verifying the copyright status of songs is not trivial. Some sources label music as “public domain”, “copyright free”, “no copyright” or other expressions of the sort, then reference conditions under which they may be used, often in the form of some conditional royalty-free licence. This practice simply creates confusion. It must be reiterated that nly an unconditional and all-permissive public licence or a copyright waiver such as CC0 can place a work in the public domain.

When music tracks are found that have been clearly and unquestionably labelled by their authors as being in the public domain, with no strings attached, it may still be necessary to verify whether the author was a member of a performance rights organization which may nonetheless control those tracks. Due to the sheer number of such organizations, this is no easy task.

In a reasonable world with reasonable laws which are reasonably enforced, public domain dedication by authors could be relied upon without many headaches. Until legislators across the world correct the current state of affairs, it’s best to avoid using works which are controlled by performance rights organizations and arguably best for authors to avoid collective licensing entirely.

The Free Music Archive hosts music released by authors under Creative Commons licences or dedicated to the public domain through CC0. Authors are correctly requested to expressly opt-out for tracks that they wish to make available on the website but are registered with a collecting society such as ASCAP, BMI or SESAC.

In 2025, the FreePD.com website by Kevin MacLeod, which provided free and public domain music by him and other authors, has sadly been taken down after 17 years of activity.

New Blender leadership

This isn’t about the public domain, but it’s worth including in this post. There are important news about Blender, a free and open source 3D creation suite and flagship program of the free software space, which I have announced recently, but I will repeat here.

Today, on the eve of Blender’s 32nd birthday, the leadership of the Blender Foundation shifts from its founder and Blender original author Ton Roosendaal to his long-standing “right hand” Francesco Siddi from Italy.

The transition has been carefully planned for a long time and Ton is moving to an advisory function in a newly established supervisory board. Many users, myself included, have signed a thank-you card for Ton.

It is arguably fair to say there is not much room for improvement in how the Blender organization is being run. It is comforting that the move has been managed conservatively. Hopefully, the new board will follow in Ton’s footsteps and reaffirm and uphold the principles that have been guiding the organization for more than two decades, aiming for continuity and stability.

Italy’s classical masterpieces

This is the third year my PDD post has a section with this title, because it still matters.

In Italy, not only is it unsafe to use works which have been licensed or dedicated to the public domain by their authors and rightholders. Sometimes even using works which are in the public domain due to copyright expiration can lead to problems.

The articles in the Italian Cultural Heritage Code hinder the commercial use of works which are part of the rich national cultural heritage are still in force.

Additional resources