Quote:
Originally Posted by screwballl
US copyright
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Yes, the real rules are complicated, and it is easy to make a mistake. For example, I now notice that what I said in #7 about Australia was inaccurate, since although it is currently a death + 70 country, if the author died before 1955, as in the F. Scott Fitzgerald case, death + 50 applies.
American publishers and authors generally remember to renew their copyrights, allowing us to make a shorthand statement that post 1922 works are under US copyright. As for as books now in print falling out of US copyright, experience is that the law will change rather than this happening. The Walt Disney Company was founded in 1923, and the lobbyists of whomever owns their copyrights will battle to push up the 105 year, protection currently in place for works published since 1978, to apply to earlier works. So prospects for much of anything now under US copyright coming out are poor. Or am I paranoid?