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Comment by Amorymeltzer | Hacker News Reader

It's advent calendar-style, so <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_in_public_domain> might be more informative.

Red Harvest is in there? You can be sure that number of film and TV writers, and perhaps directors and producers, have set their alarm clocks for that one. https://crimereads.com/the-strange-cinematic-afterlife-of-re...

You may be interested to know that the story for The Maltese Falcon, not listed, will also be entering public domain because it was published in monthly installments in Black Mask magazine before it was published as a novel. (Any changes between the publication in Black Mask and those made for the novelization, if significant enough, will of course still be under copyright and so the novelization proper still won't be entering public domain for another 13 months.)

We have had difficulty getting our hands on these issues, though (or scans of them).

It's interesting that AMC just launched a series featuring Sam Spade this year, the year before the character goes into the public domain…

When you say, "we" who do you mean? Are the magazines particularly rare?

Those of us trying to get them scanned in and online.

Black Mask is pretty rare. Brooks Hefner at James Madison University oversaw the acquisition/accession (I think) of their Black Mask collection, of which they have quite a bit in comparison to other places, but it's still incomplete. The Ransom Center in Austin specializes in rare and collectible items, but only has one or two issues. The Library of Congress may well have a complete collection, but what they do have isn't digitized because the pages are brittle and are literally falling apart (even moreso than other/older printed material).

Godspeed to all working on this.

I'm guessing you're already on the Pulp Scans group, right?

No.

Dashiel Hammet died in 1961 so wouldn't that mean the Maltese Falcon will still in PD until 2031 in the EU?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_the_shorter_term

Yes. the advent calendar is an odd choice. Do they really expect people to go back to the site every day to find out what the images refer to?

I guess it is meant to be a bit of fun, creating a sense of a countdown to the "big day". A few people might go back and check each day, but I suppose most will just catch a few days on social media (they do a post every day saying saying what the new window reveal is), or just check back on January 1st, which is public domain day, and when all windows will have been revealed. They do a blogpost on that day too which unrolls the whole selection of highlights. E.g. see this one from PD day of this year: https://publicdomainreview.org/blog/2024/01/public-domain-da.... That's maybe seen as the main thing.

Or if you want to peek ahead like a kid who's bound for the Naughty list, you can use dev tools and add the 'will-open' class to any of those <button> elements :)

No notable wroters, except one: Pär Lagerkvist

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