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https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2020/
Here are some of the works that will be entering the public domain in 2020. (To find more material from 1924, you can visit the Catalogue of Copyright Entries.)
[...] Unfortunately, the fact that works from 1924 are legally available does not mean they are actually available. After 95 years, many of these works are already lost or literally disintegrating (as with old films and recordings), evidence of what long copyright terms do to the conservation of cultural artifacts. In fact, one of the items we feature below, Clark Gable's debut in White Man, apparently no longer exists. For the works that have survived, however, their long-awaited entry into the public domain is still something to celebrate. (Under the 56-year copyright term that existed until 1978, we would really have something to celebrate – works from 1963 would be entering the public domain in 2020!)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 02 2020, @05:41AM
For software you should be required to provide complete build instructions, copies of source code, copies of published binaries, all documentation, and a build process which will provide verifiable builds. This must be done for *ALL* software to have copyright protection, which will ensure every point in the toolchain is available and functional. In order to now slow things down TOO badly, this can only be required once per year, or every 1-5 years alongside copyright renewal, which will allow periodic snapshotting and only require publishing at the initial release, and every renewal period, for which the developer can hopefully stage build instructions.
People haven't realized just how brittle our software and hardware ecosystem truly is, and without the documentation as well as comprehensive build instructions and periodic snapshots, most of it becomes impossible to build moving forward unless you have the software archeology and history available to find the exact subset of released with which each library or application can be sucessfully compiled as well as run. There are breakages at both layers, as well as the hardware and most people ignore them.
If someone is feeling particularly political, take this information and compose a letter to Ron Wyden, or your local senator/representative and maybe someone can get an update to our copyright laws to remedy this major oversight in American and then international software copyright law.