Quote:
Originally Posted by Cori
Could you explain this..? By my understanding, the copyright for this one ends in the US 95 years after first publication, which'd be 1st Jan 2028 (the start of the next year after lapse.) No books at all come into the public domain in the US before 2018 ... all that can be worked with is stuff that's already there (pre '23 publications, and books first published in the US, between '23 and '78 which weren't copyright-renewed as required by the law at the time.)
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I am not a lawyer, but this is my understanding:
Under the 1978 US Copyright law, works which were in their renewal term were granted a total length of 75 years from year of publication. Works which were in their first copyright term were granted life-plus-50. Both of those terms had 20 years added on under the Sonny Bono act (nicknamed the Mickey Mouse act since Disney corporation had such a huge lobbying role in getting the terms extended). So only works which were copyrighted between 1923 and 1950 (inclusive) were changed to fixed-length terms, and anything copyrighted in 1951 or later were converted to life-plus-x terms.
In any event, unless the copyright owner specifically places something in the public domain in the U.S., the next time anything will enter the public domain will be 2018, when the 1923 works with the 95-year terms will have their copyrights expire.
But of course by then the U.S. Congress (the best money can buy!) will have extended the copyright terms again and I bet we'll be able to kiss any new additions to the public domain by expiration of copyright goodbye!