Thread: Confused: Is there a copyright geek in the house?
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Old 10-03-2007, 10:20 AM   #5
andym
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Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT View Post
Another complex issue is that prior to some point in the mid 1960s, copyright had to be manually "renewed" in the US. That's why all the magazine SF is being posted to PG - they are magazine stories for which the copyright was not renewed, and hence the material "inadvertently" entered the public domain. Book publishers appear to have been pretty rigorous about renewing their copyrights, but magazine publishers less so. I guess that it was material which wasn't thought to have any lasting value at the time.
Which may explain the anomaly with PG Wodehouse. Most of his books aren't in the public domain anywhere so maybe the ones that are in the public domain got there because someone in the estate forgot to renew the copyright.

Patricia. My pet project would be to do an annotated version of Ulysses but I'm worried I might get sued by the estate!
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