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The New York Times reported earlier this week that on January 1, 2024, the copyright for “Steamboat Willy,” the first-ever film featuring Mickey Mouse in his classic depiction, will enter the public domain, though speculation is rampant that Disney will fight a legal battle to keep its rights to him.

Is it time for Disney to rent Congress (because they're not honest enough to stay bought) again and extend the copyright another five or ten years?

The Tower Treasure, The House on the Cliff, and The Secret of the Old Mill were published in 1927. They were the "breeder" for the Hardy Boys series from the Stratemeyer Syndicate as published by Grosset & Dunlap. The actual author was Leslie McFarlane, who was paid a mere $100 for each book, which he wrote from outlines furnished by Edward Stratemeyer himself. Stratemeyer died in 1930, and McFarlane died in 1979.

This article is incomplete.

I remember reading the original Hardy Boys books in the 60s, but when I went to reread them a few years later I found they had been rewritten to remove references to firearms and other things.

Another good site for information is Duke's Public Domain Webpage.

Books entering the Public Domain:
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
Arthur Conan Doyle, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes
Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop
Countee Cullen, Copper Sun
A. A. Milne, Now We Are Six, illustrations by E. H. Shepard
Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey
Ernest Hemingway, Men Without Women (collection of short stories)
William Faulkner, Mosquitoes
Agatha Christie, The Big Four
Edith Wharton, Twilight Sleep
Herbert Asbury, The Gangs of New York (the original 1927 publication)
Franklin W. Dixon (pseudonym), The Tower Treasure (the first Hardy Boys book)
Hermann Hesse, Der Steppenwolf (in the original German)
Franz Kafka, Amerika (in the original German)
Marcel Proust, Le Temps retrouvé (the final installment of In Search of Lost Time, in the original French)

Movies Entering the Public Domain:
Metropolis (directed by Fritz Lang)
The Jazz Singer (the first feature-length film with synchronized dialogue; directed by Alan Crosland)
Wings (winner of the first Academy Award for outstanding picture; directed by William A. Wellman)
Sunrise (directed by F.W. Murnau)
The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (Alfred Hitchcock’s first thriller)
The King of Kings (directed by Cecil B. DeMille)
London After Midnight (now a lost film; directed by Tod Browning)
The Way of All Flesh (now a lost film; directed by Victor Fleming)
7th Heaven (inspired the ending of the 2016 film La La Land; directed by Frank Borzage)
The Kid Brother (starring Harold Lloyd; directed by Ted Wilde)
The Battle of the Century (starring the comedy duo Laurel and Hardy; directed by Clyde Bruckman)
Upstream (directed by John Ford)

Musical Compositions entering the public domain:
The Best Things in Life Are Free (George Gard De Sylva, Lew Brown, Ray Henderson; from the musical Good News)
(I Scream You Scream, We All Scream for) Ice Cream (Howard Johnson, Billy Moll, Robert A. King)
Puttin’ on the Ritz (Irving Berlin)
Funny Face and ’S Wonderful (Ira and George Gershwin; from the musical Funny Face)
Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man and Ol’ Man River (Oscar Hammerstein II, Jerome Kern; from the musical Show Boat)
Back Water Blues, Preaching the Blues, Foolish Man Blues (Bessie Smith)
Potato Head Blues, Gully Low Blues (Louis Armstrong)
Rusty Pail Blues, Sloppy Water Blues, Soothin’ Syrup Stomp (Thomas Waller)
Black and Tan Fantasy and East St. Louis Toodle-O (Bub Miley, Duke Ellington)
Billy Goat Stomp, Hyena Stomp, Jungle Blues (Ferdinand Joseph Morton)
My Blue Heaven (George Whiting, Walter Donaldson)
Diane (Erno Rapee, Lew Pollack)
Mississippi Mud (Harry Barris, James Cavanaugh)