Yesterday was a pretty momentous day in America, and not just because so many of us got a head start on breaking New Year’s resolutions. It also was a significant milestone in the history of intellectual property rights for a variety of expressive works, including motion pictures.
Put simply, motion pictures with renewed copyrights published between January 1 and December 31, 1923, were initially slated to enter the United States public domain at the beginning of 1999 at the end of th