It once seemed self-evident that if a thing is valuable, it is worth protecting. Conversely, if a thing is deemed worthless, it's tossed away with nary a thought.
But now, at this time in American history, as a caravan of apparent asylum-seekers has finished passing through Mexico (not needing or wanting asylum there, I note) to press on the border of the United States, it feels, at least to me, that the self-evident value of American citizenship is about the worth of a mere bauble.
Smithsonian reports that January 1, 2019 marks the end of 95 years of copyright protection for some well-known works, including Robert Frost's beloved poem "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" and Winston Churchill's "The World Crisis."
According to the report, at "midnight on New Year's Eve, all works first published in the United States in 1923 will enter the public domain. It has been 21 years since the last mass expiration of copyright in the U.S."
