The Brief

Curled up on a small, white rectangle of fabric on the grass by a park bench in Paris, Italian swimmer Thomas Ceccon inadvertently took the internet by storm simply by sleeping outside. The moment, posted to social media on August 5 by a fellow Olympic athlete, came a week after Ceccon failed to qualify for the men’s 200-meter backstroke finals, despite having just won gold in the 100-meter event.

In an interview with an Italian broadcaster, Ceccon blamed his performance gap on subpar sleeping conditions in the Olympic Village — namely, heat. Last week, media speculation that the uncomfortable temperatures were also behind his alfresco nap stirred an already roiling pot of concerns around the impact of extreme weather on this year’s summer games. (The Italian Swimming Federation denied that Ceccon’s nap was related to conditions in the Olympic village.)

In the weeks leading up to the Paris Olympics, weather forecasters and athletes alike feared that the games could become the hottest on record, surpassing the 2021 Tokyo events, where high humidity and 90-degree-Fahrenheit days led 100 athletes to seek medical attention for heat illnesses; even more nonathletes followed suit. A punishing heat dome settled over Paris on July 29, lasting for four days and spiking temperatures to highs of 97 degrees F as the first week of the games were underway.

During the scorching weather, national teams rushed to keep their athletes in tip-top shape, renting air conditioners for their bedrooms in the Olympic Village and offering them ice vests. The Australian Olympic Committee even invested in state-of-the-art monitors to record on-the-ground temperature, radiation, humidity, and wind speed, resulting in personalized recommendations to help their athletes manage heat risks. For some outdoor sports, like tennis and soccer, new protocols for additional rest breaks were triggered as temperatures surpassed predetermined safety thresholds.

Climate change is driving up the frequency of extreme and deadly heat waves. Rings of Fire II, a report on Olympic heat released before this year’s games began on July 26, found that average summer temperatures in Paris have warmed by 3.1 degrees Celsius, or about 5.6 degrees F, since 1924, the last time the City of Light hosted the games.

“Yesterday, climate change crashed the Olympics,” said climatologist Friederike Otto of World Weather Attribution, an academic project that studies climate change impacts on meteorology, on July 31. “If the atmosphere wasn’t overloaded with emissions from burning fossil fuel, Paris would have been about 3 degrees C cooler and much safer for sport.”

Just a few degrees can make a big difference for athletes. In warm temperatures, the body is less able to shed the heat it generates, which can impact performance and health: A 2023 study of marathon and racewalking athletes found that a 2.7 degrees F increase in core body temperature could result in up to 20 percent slower performance times. And as the body tries to cool down, it sweats and dilates blood vessels. When these mechanisms are pushed too hard, they lead to dangerous health risks — such as dehydration, organ failure, and heart attacks. And the longer a heat wave drags on, the more deadly the impacts become.

Extreme heat affects a wide range of sports. The Rings of Fire report, a collaboration between the British Association for Sustainable Sport and the Australian climate advocacy group Frontrunners, documented stories from elite athletes across 15 sports on how extreme temperatures had impacted their careers and health. In the report, British swimmer Hector Pardoe said he was “practically paralytic” after a heat stroke that left him vomiting and motionless during a competition in Budapest. For Yusuke Suzuki, a Japanese racewalker, heatstroke was a torturous ordeal that took two years to recover from.

“Going forward, I don’t see this being any less of a problem,” said Mike Tipton, a human physiology researcher at the University of Portsmouth in the U.K. who contributed to the report. While Tipton is encouraged by the changes he sees taking place across sports to protect athletes and fans from extreme heat — such as water breaks and cooling stations — he also cautions against losing sight of the importance of mitigating the direct cause of climate change: humans burning fossil fuels.

The organizers of the Paris Olympics would seem to agree. In the years leading up to the games, the committee made unprecedented sustainability promises like slashing the greenhouse gas emissions of recent Olympics in half. But, along with a 60 percent plant-based menu, the decision to cut energy use by building Olympic Village dorms with geothermal cooling, rather than air conditioning, has become a main source of athletes’ complaints about the accommodations. Bernadette Szocs, a Romanian table tennis player, told The Guardian that the fans offered in dorm rooms weren’t enough. “You can feel it is too hot in the room,” she said.

Japan's Kaito Kawabata lies down after competing in the men's 4x400--meter relay at the Paris 2024 Olympics.

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“I have a lot of respect for the comfort of athletes, but I think a lot more about the survival of humanity,” Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo told a French radio station in 2023 about the decision to eschew air-conditioning. But as temperature projections and concerns climbed, eventually, the organizers caved and ordered 2,500 air-conditioning units for teams willing to pay for them. Some, like the Korean swim team, have opted to stay in hotels. Unequal access to such comforts have raised concerns of two-tier games.

Experts agree that air-conditioning can create a competitive advantage. “Being able to cool down at night is a significant part of managing heat risk,” said Richard Franklin, a professor of public health and tropical medicine at James Cook University, in Queensland, Australia. Franklin added that heat waves often come with higher nighttime temperatures that prevent the body from fully recovering, and that lack of sleep and the physical strain of competition can increase risks.

There are other ways that athletes can mitigate the dangers of competing in high temperatures.

“The best thing you can do is prepare ahead of the games by acclimatizing your body to the conditions,” said Madeleine Orr, an assistant professor of sport ecology at the University of Toronto and author of a book on how global warming is changing sports. She says that each sport comes with unique risk factors, such as time spent on exposed pavement, or duration of play. But for any athlete to properly sync their body before competition, she says, exercising in the heat is crucial. “It doesn’t eliminate risk, but it pushes the boundaries of when they feel the impacts. It makes a big, big difference.”

Hannah Mason, a public health lecturer at James Cook University and lead author of a 2024 paper analyzing the impacts of extreme heat on mass sporting events, said that other factors — including the availability of shade and existing health conditions — should be considered in athletes’ heat preparedness plans. For example, Paralympic athletes often use equipment, like wheelchairs, that can trap more heat.

Britain's Jack Draper cools himself with a bag of ice during a break in play.

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Tipton, Orr, and Mason all agreed that, eventually, the escalating dangers of climate change will leave Olympics organizers with no option but to change the timing of summer games to happen during months with cooler weather. The good news, Tipton says, is that teams and athletic federations have started taking the risk of heat more seriously. “We’re seeing the nature of sports change in terms of the rules, regulations, and permissible cooling strategies,” he said.

According to Mason, more top-down rulemaking on safety limits will be crucial for managing risk. With the high stakes and pressure of competition, she says athletes are often unwilling to back out even when conditions become dangerously hot.

“If it’s a few degrees too hot, they’re not going to back out,” she said. “We need policies to fall back on so that we don’t put these decisions in the hands of athletes that have spent their whole life training for that event.”

It's long been understood that working outside in hot weather can be dangerous: Even ancient Egyptians worried about dehydration for workers building the pyramids.

Now, a growing body of research is quantifying that danger — and suggesting ways to better protect workers.

The risks extend beyond obvious concerns like dehydration and heatstroke.

"Heat makes people slower to react and worse at making decisions," says Adam Dean, a labor economist at George Washington University. "That means farmworkers driving a tractor or a construction worker operating equipment are more likely to have a fatal accident on a hot day."

But a suite of new analyses has found that regulations that provide basic safeguards like water, shade and rest for workers in hot conditions can help lower the numbers of heat-driven injuries, workers' compensation claims and even deaths.

The studies all use different datasets and methods but come to a similar conclusion, says Barrak Alahmad, an environmental health scientist at Harvard University and an expert on occupational health risks.

"States with heat standards have lower risk of heat injuries, of heat fatalities and other outcomes compared to states that don't have these heat standards," Alahmad says.

The most recent study, published in December in the journal Health Affairs, looked at California's rule protecting outdoor workers from heat, the oldest such rule in the country. Researchers found the regulations led to at least a 33% drop in heat-related deaths among workers after 2010 — an estimate of several dozen lives saved each year.

The outcome "delivers a clear message," says Dean, the study's lead author. "Heat standards, if they're adopted and effectively enforced, can significantly reduce worker deaths."

The new wave of studies comes as the federal government is considering creating new national rules to protect workers from excessive heat. Several states and local jurisdictions are also considering new standards.

The federal rules, first proposed under Biden, are now under review by the Trump administration. Their future is uncertain.

While the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has recognized for decades that heat poses risks to workers, there is active debate among worker advocates and business groups about how best to provide protections: via stringent, highly specific regulations, or with broader guidelines that allow employers to take the lead in crafting efforts specific to their own industries.

The new studies could help inform any new rules, says Jordan Barab, who was deputy assistant secretary of labor at OSHA under the Obama administration. Though the basic measures to protect workers have been well-known for decades, it's invaluable, he says, to "show that when a state actually implements these requirements that they actually have saved lives."

The California example

Federal regulators first noted that heat could put American workers at risk in the 1970s and '80s. But for years, OSHA prioritized regulating other workplace hazards. Heat issues were managed under the agency's more generalized rules, such as the "general duty clause," which required employers to maintain workplaces "free from recognized hazards."

But some states, like California, decided to go further. In 2005, after the highly publicized deaths of several farmworkers due to heat exposure, California passed the nation's first state-level regulations to protect outdoor workers from excessive heat. Requirements kicked off when temperatures exceeded 85 degrees Fahrenheit (the threshold has since been lowered further).

The rules set out to provide some simple protections: access to water, shade and rest on hot days.

For many years, California was the only state with such heat rules, setting up a natural experiment: Would heat-related worker deaths fall in California, compared to neighboring states with similar weather conditions but no such protections?

The new study suggests that, at first, the rules didn't make much of a difference. During the first few years, researchers did not find a decrease in heat-related death rates in California compared to neighboring states.

"When California first adopted a standard in 2005, it was ineffective," Dean says.

But that would soon change.

In 2010, the state strengthened the rule and deaths began to drop, the study found — eventually falling by more than 30%, with even more dramatic reductions in recent years.

The changes to the rule, Dean says, were critical. Though the initial rules required employers to provide water and shade, in practice, inspectors sometimes found problems — like undrinkable water.

So, the state clarified. Water had to be drinkable and free. And there needed to be enough shade for all workers during breaks. California also ramped up workplace inspections and launched an educational campaign to train the state's many outdoor workers about their rights.

"A critical lesson is that merely passing a heat standard is not enough," Dean says. "It was only after the state launched a statewide enforcement campaign that we started to see deaths decrease relative to the surrounding states."

The rules could have been even more effective with more consistent enforcement, says Garrett Brown, who until 2014 worked for Cal/OSHA, the state agency tasked with enforcing the rule. Even though the number of inspections increased, he says, limited staffing caused ongoing enforcement challenges.

It could have been "even more health protective for workers if there was an even more robust enforcement program," Brown says.

A growing body of evidence

The California study joins two other analyses with similar findings published in the past year.

Together, they provide important insights that could help in the design of future rules, says Alahmad. He led an analysis of heat-influenced worker injuries, published earlier this year, which found that states with heat rules had lower injury rates than those without.

Another recent study found workers' compensation claims were lower in states with heat standards compared to those without.

The next step for researchers is to suss out the most important parts of those regulations, Alahmad says: "What elements are actually most effective?"

That will be key information for regulators across the country. More than a dozen states and cities proposed new heat protection rules in 2025.

Edited by Rachel Waldholz

The nominations for the 98th Academy Awards are out. It's a lot of films, and we are here to help! You can see the full list of nominees here, and read our takeaways here.

Below, you can find details and coverage of the 14 films nominated in six major categories: best picture, best actor and actress, best supporting actor and actress, and best director. Dive in!

Sinners

The gist: Ryan Coogler's movie stars Michael B. Jordan playing twin brothers who open a 1930s juke joint. And opening night does not go as planned when a bloodthirsty menace appears outside. (Vampires — we're talking about vampires.)

16 nominations: actor in a leading role, actor in a supporting role, actress in a supporting role, casting, cinematography, costume design, directing, film editing, makeup and hairstyling, original score, original song, best picture, production design, sound, visual effects, original screenplay

Where to see it: Stream it on HBO Max and Prime Video. Rent or buy it on Apple TV and more.

Dive deeper:
What our critics thought
📖 'Sinners' gives Michael B. Jordan two roles of a lifetime
📖 Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan are symbiotic. 'Sinners' is the latest proof
📖 In 'Sinners,' the blues is a portal between this world and the next
🎧 In 'Sinners,' there will be blood, booze, and the blues

Stories and interviews
📖🎧 Michael B. Jordan expands his cinematic universe

One Battle After Another

The gist: Paul Thomas Anderson's action thriller stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a washed up ex-revolutionary whose past comes to haunt him. DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro and Teyana Taylor are all nominated for their performances.

13 nominations: actor in a leading role, actor in a supporting role, another actor in a supporting role, actress in a supporting role, casting, cinematography, directing, film editing, original score, best picture, production design, sound, adapted screenplay

Where to see it: In theaters. Stream it on HBO Max. Rent or buy it on Prime Video, Apple TV and more.

Dive deeper:
What our critics thought
📖🎧 Prescient and political, 'One Battle After Another' is one of the year's best films
📖 'One Battle After Another' wants a revolution
🎧 'One Battle After Another' is revolutionary — and revelatory

Stories and interviews
🎧 Chase Infiniti reflects on her breakthrough role

Frankenstein

The gist: Guillermo del Toro's take on the Mary Shelley classic. Jacob Elordi plays the creature and Oscar Isaac is the scientist.

9 nominations: actor in a supporting role, cinematography, costume design, makeup and hairstyling, original score, best picture, production design, sound, adapted screenplay

Where to see it: Stream it on Netflix.

Dive deeper:
What our critics thought
📖 Frankenstein is the monster (movie) Guillermo del Toro was born to bring to life
🎧 Only Guillermo del Toro could've made this 'Frankenstein'

Stories and interviews
📖🎧 Guillermo del Toro says his future was set the first time he saw 'Frankenstein'

Marty Supreme

The gist: Timothée Chalamet plays a working-class heel aiming to become a table tennis champion in the 1950s.

9 nominations: actor in a leading role, casting, cinematography, costume design, directing, film editing, best picture, production design, original screenplay

Where to see it: In theaters.

Dive deeper:
What our critics thought
📖🎧 Timothée Chalamet brings a lot to the table in 'Marty Supreme'
🎧 In 'Marty Supreme,' Timothée Chalamet is good at being supremely annoying

Stories and interviews
📖🎧 The real ping pong champion — and hustler — who inspired 'Marty Supreme'

Sentimental Value

The gist: Stellan Skarsgård is a filmmaker attempting to reconnect with his estranged daughters, proving that at the very least, the tension between art and parenthood is complicated. Skarsgård, Renate Reinsve, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas and Elle Fanning are all nominated for their performances.

9 nominations: actor in a supporting role, actress in a leading role, actress in a supporting role, actress in a supporting role, directing, film editing, best international feature film, best picture, original screenplay

Where to see it: In theaters. Rent or buy it on Prime Video, Apple TV and more.

Dive deeper:
What our critics thought
📖🎧 'Sentimental Value' is a family drama that lets everyone off the hook too easily
🎧 Finding 'Sentimental Value' in a broken family

Stories and interviews
🎧 Stellan Skarsgård talks about his starring role in the new movie, 'Sentimental Value'

Hamnet

The gist: A young English couple meets, falls in love, has children and suffers an unspeakable tragedy. One of them happens to be William Shakespeare, who goes on to write Hamlet. Jessie Buckley plays his wife.

8 nominations: actress in a leading role, casting, costume design, directing, original score, best picture, production design, adapted screenplay

Where to see it: In theaters.

Dive deeper:
What our critics thought
📖🎧 Forget 'Shakespeare in Love' — 'Hamnet' explores Shakespeare in grief
📖 The real 'Hamnet' died centuries ago, but this novel is timeless
🎧 'Hamnet' is a Shakespearean tearjerker that pulls no punches

Bugonia

The gist: Yorgos Lanthimos' flick stars Emma Stone as a high-powered CEO who is kidnapped by conspiracy theorists and accused of being an alien.

4 nominations: actress in a leading role, original score, best picture, adapted screenplay

Where to see it: Stream it on Peacock. Rent or buy it on Prime Video, Apple TV and more.

Dive deeper:
What our critics thought
📖 'Bugonia' may or may not be about aliens; it's definitely about alienation
📖🎧 Yorgos Lanthimos is messing with us again. His movie 'Bugonia' will keep you guessing
🎧 Conspiracies aren't even the weirdest thing in 'Bugonia'

Stories and interviews
📖🎧 Conspiracy theorists fuel 'Bugonia' climate horror
📖🎧 Would you shave your head for free movie tickets? 'Bugonia' wants to make a buzz

F1

The gist: Brad Pitt plays a veteran F1 driver who clashes with a young hotshot, played by Damson Idris.

4 nominations: film editing, best picture, sound, visual effects

Where to see it: Stream it on Apple TV. Buy it on Prime Video and more.

Dive deeper:
What our critics thought
📖🎧 Brad Pitt plays a veteran racer who won't slow down in 'F1'
🎧 Is there vroom in your summer for 'F1 The Movie'?

The Secret Agent

The gist: Set in 1977, Wagner Moura plays a former researcher caught in the political turmoil of the Brazilian military dictatorship.

4 nominations: actor in a leading role, casting, best international feature film, best picture

Where to see it: In theaters.

Dive deeper:
What our critics thought
📖🎧 Let 'The Secret Agent' fill you in on what it's like to live under a dictatorship
🎧 Actor Wagner Moura talks about his role in the new Brazilian film, 'The Secret Agent'

Train Dreams

The gist: Joel Edgerton plays a logger and railroad worker in the rapidly-changing America of the early 20th century.

4 nominations: cinematography, original song, best picture, adapted screenplay

Where to see it: Stream it on Netflix.

Dive deeper:
What our critics thought
🎧 The new film 'Train Dreams' is almost unbearably beautiful
🎧 'Train Dreams' evokes frontier life, fate and death

Stories and interviews
🎧 Director and co-writer Clint Bentley talks about his film, 'Train Dreams'

Blue Moon

The gist: Directed by Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke plays lyricist Lorenz Hart on the worst night of his life — the opening of Oklahoma! on Broadway — after his long-term collaborator Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott) has forged a new partnership with Oscar Hammerstein II.

2 nominations: actor in a leading role, original screenplay

Where to see it: Rent or buy it on Prime Video, Apple TV and more.

Dive deeper:
What our critics thought
📖🎧 A once-in-a-'Blue Moon' Broadway breakup
🎧 'Blue Moon' will bewitch, bother and bewilder you

Stories and interviews
📖🎧 'Blue Moon' pushed Ethan Hawke to his limit: 'That's a thrilling spot to be in'
📖🎧 Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater find the heartbreak in 'Blue Moon'

If I Had Legs I'd Kick You

The gist: Rose Byrne plays a therapist shouldering all the responsibility of caring for her ill daughter while her emotionally absent husband is away for work.

1 nomination: actress in a leading role

Where to see it: Rent or buy it on Prime Video, Apple TV and more.

Dive deeper:
What our critics thought
🎧 'If I Had Legs I'd Kick You' shows off Rose Byrne's dramatic chops

Stories and interviews
🎧Mary Bronstein discusses motherhood in her movie 'If I Had Legs I'd Kick You'

Song Sung Blue

The gist: Kate Hudson plays a down-on-her luck musician who teams up with Hugh Jackman to form a Neil Diamond tribute band.

1 nomination: actress in a leading role

Where to see it: In theaters. Rent or buy it on Prime Video, Apple TV and more.

Dive deeper:
🎧 Filmmaker Craig Brewer channels his inner Neil Diamond in 'Song Sung Blue'

Weapons

The gist: Seventeen children leave their homes and vanish into the suburban night in this horror film.

1 nomination: actress in a supporting role

Where to see it: Stream it on HBO Max. Rent or buy it on Prime Video, Apple TV and more.

Dive deeper:
What our critics thought
📖 17 children vanish into the night — 'Weapons' is terrific and terrifying
📖🎧 'Weapons' exposes the dark underbelly of American suburbia
🎧 In 'Weapons', the kids aren't at all right, not in the slightest, nope

Physical media has been making a comeback. Whammy Analog Media, an Echo Park storefront specializing in VHS tapes, has been providing a place for enthusiasts and newcomers to embrace the antiquated format.

From tape collector to curator

Whammy founder Erik Varho always wanted to open his own store — he just didn’t have a clue as what it would be. A die-hard videotape lover, Varho never stopped collecting them, even after major releases ceased printing in 2006.

Shelves full of VHS tapes inside Whammy Analog Media.

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In 2020, fresh out of work and with VHS tapes lining the walls of his studio apartment, he started selling his tapes via Instagram.

“I was pleasantly surprised that people were actually out there buying them,” Varho said.

With the success of his online sales, Varho was able to open a brick-and-mortar store in 2022. Varho intended it to just be a retail store, but the space, he thought, was perfect for an indoor screen.

“I just kind of dove headfirst into the microcinema aspect of it,” Varho said.

Whammy’s been hosting events celebrating that grainy quality of the Video Home System — or VHS — ever since.

A crowd watching a projected VHS film inside Whammy Analog Media.

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A small crowd gathers to watch a film inside Whammy Analog Media.

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Meet me at the swap meet

One regular event is the Whammy VHS Swap Meet. The quarterly meet-up brings together video vendors from across Southern California to showcase their wares.

Bad Taste specializes in lowbrow horror and cult films, while Cinefile Liquidations sells vintage posters, records and other film ephemera.

“It's just kind of a place for people to display their craziest, weirdest, rarest finds and just have a place to talk about them and hang out,” Varho said.

Those rare finds include Image of the Beast from 1981, the third installment in a Christian apocalyptic thriller series about the rise of the antichrist and an evil A.I.

Whammy recently projected the film as part of its “Stuck on VHS” series, which showcases works that were only released direct to video.

A rewinding renewal

Shoppers look through various stacks of tape inside Whammy Analog Media.

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Besides an entire store, Varho also owns a storage unit filled to the brim with VHS tapes. Those who RSVP to Sunday's swap meet get a free mystery VHS tape upon entry.

He says the most frequent question he gets is if they sell VCRs. They do, but they run out pretty quickly.

Varho takes it as a good sign and says lately customers have been skewing younger and younger.

"People who didn't even grow up with VHS who are just interested in exploring movies in that way. It's a fun time to be into VHS for sure,” Varho said.

Sunday's event includes a screening of a mystery VHS.

“I can’t reveal what we’re playing, but it’s always stuff that is going to be attention-grabbing and usually pretty silly,” Varho said.

Details

Whammy! VHS Swap Meet
Location: 2514 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles (in the back)
When: Sunday, noon to 4 p.m.
Free admission, RSVP here

One of the most unusual of the creative treasures to enter the public domain this month is King of Jazz. The plotless, experimental 1930 musical film shot in early Technicolor centers on influential bandleader Paul Whiteman, nicknamed "The King of Jazz."

In one memorable scene, the portly, mustachioed Whiteman opens a small bag and winks at the camera as miniature musicians file out one after another like a colony of ants and take their places on an ornate, table-top bandstand.

A new video based on clips from King of Jazz has won this year's Public Domain Film Remix Contest — an annual competition that invites filmmakers from around the world to reimagine often long-forgotten literary classics, films, cartoons, music, and visual art that are now in the public domain. This means creators can use these materials freely, without copyright restrictions. In 2026, works created in 1930 entered the public domain.

Titled Rhapsody, Reimagined, the roughly two-minute video captures the King of Jazz's surreal quality: Cookie-cutter rows of musicians, showgirls, office workers and random furniture cascade across the screen as Whiteman's winking face looks on.

"I wanted to transform the figures and bodies into more dream-like shapes through collage and looping and repetition," said Seattle-based filmmaker Andrea Hale, who created the piece in collaboration with composer Greg Hardgrave. For video artists, Hale said discovering what's new in the public domain each January is a thrill. "We're always looking for things to draw from," Hale said. "Opening that up to a bigger spread of materials is amazing. That's the dream."

A massive repository of content

The Internet Archive, the San Francisco-based nonprofit library behind the contest, digitizes and provides public access to a massive repository of content, including many materials used by contest participants. "These materials have often just been in film canisters for decades," said digital librarian Brewster Kahle, who founded the Internet Archive in 1996.

This year's submissions range from a reworking of the 1930 film The Blue Angel starring Betty Boop — another public domain entrant this year — instead of Marlene Dietrich, to an AI-generated take on the 1930 Nancy Drew book The Mystery at Lilac Inn.

Kahle said the Internet Archive received nearly 280 entries this time around, the highest number since the competition launched six years ago. "Things are not just musty, old archival documentation of the past," Kahle said. "People are bringing them to life in new and different ways, without fear of being sued."

The public domain in the era of AI

Lawsuits have become a growing concern for artists and copyright holders, especially with the rise of generative AI. Recent years have seen a surge in online video takedowns and copyright infringement disputes.

Media companies are trying to address the problem through deals with tech firms, such as Disney and OpenAI's plan, announced late last year, to introduce a service allowing users to create short videos based on copyrighted characters, including Cinderella and Darth Vader.

"On the one hand, these licensing agreements seem quite a clean solution to thorny legal questions," said Jennifer Jenkins, director of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law School. "But what's exciting about the public domain is that material, after a long, robust 95-year copyright term, is just simply free for anyone — without a team of lawyers, without a licensing agreement, without having to work for Disney or OpenAI — to just put online," Jenkins said.

Jenkins also pointed out an interesting twist for people who create new works using materials from the public domain. "You actually get a copyright in your remix," she said. "Just like Disney has copyrights in all of its remakes of wonderful public domain works like Snow White or Cinderella." (The Brothers Grimm popularized these two characters in their 19th century collection Grimm's Fairy Tales. But their roots are much deeper, going back to European folklore collections of the 1600s and beyond.)

However, this only applies to works created by humans — U.S. copyright law currently doesn't recognize works authored by AI. And Jenkins further cautioned that creators only get a copyright in their new creative contributions to the remix, and not the underlying material.

This year's Public Domain Film Remix Contest winner Andrea Hale said she's using a Creative Commons license for Rhapsody, Reimagined. This means the filmmaker retains the copyright to her work but grants permissions that allow other people to freely use, share, and build upon it. "I'm keeping with the spirit of the public domain," Hale said.

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