Happy new Year! For January’s Freeform, it feels right to cover some notable works coming into the public domain as of the 1st of January this year. While at first I thought this would be a pretty quick list to bring together, with a few notes about my gripes with a certain mouse and the company that contributed to the mess that public domain laws are today, low and behold I have been diving into forums and posts trying to parse copyright laws between various countries and convoluted rules to figure out if the mouse in question has even entered the public domain in the UK. Long story short, yes Steamboat Willie is in the public domain in the UK… I think.

The internet is a big place, and because of this it can be pretty challenging to find some of those really interesting parts. In the first instalment of Freeform I’m going to be taking quite a broad approach in the sites and resources collected. Rather than being very particular, or using niche sites, I think it would be good to share resources from big institutions, or sites which inspired me to make ectype.

Freeform is a new part of the Ectype project.

Each month there will be a new page which shares a variety of resources that are already free to use, whether they are in the public domain or creative commons, with links to where they can be found and accessed. These collections may form around a theme or subject, type of media, or be put together by a guest curator.