The Great Gatsby, Mrs Dalloway hit public domain in 2021 02 Jan 2021 Gulf Today Report As 2020 drew to a close, a list of heralded cultural works slipped into the public domain. Each year, copyright runs out on a variety of books, films, musical compositions, and more. As NPR reports, an act passed by the US Congress in 1998 brought the duration of copyright for works published between 1923 and 1977 to 95 years. Now that the year 2021 has arrived, works published in 1925 have reached the public domain in the US. READ MORE “That means that copyright has expired,” law professor Jennifer Jenkins told NPR. “And all of the works are free for anyone to use, reuse, build upon for anyone – without paying a fee.”