Quote:
Originally Posted by Nate the great
This is my brief working guide, not an explanation of the whys and wherefores.
1964 Everything published after this year is under copyright until the end of time. It might have an open license, but it's still copyrighted.
|
This is not entirely true, Nate. Unless the copyright term is extended again (which Mr. Disney and co would of course very much like), new material will start entering the public domain once again in 2019 in the US. In addition, the author of any work can voluntarily place it into the public domain at any time.
The US currently has a "Life + 70" copyright law, like most countries in the world, which applies from 1978 onwards. From 2047, US copyright will start behaving like that of rest of the world, and works will enter the public domain at the start of the year following the 70th anniversary of the author's death.
There are many books which are in the public domain in virtually every country in the world
except the US (those works published after 1923 by authors who died before 1937), and a rather smaller number which are in the public domain in the US but
not elsewhere (pre-1923 works works by authors who died after 1937).
In the rest of the world, books continue to enter the public domain year by year (eg in a few days we, in the UK, will get all the books by authors who died during 1937, a year after than we get all the books by authors who died during 1938, and so on); unfortunately this natural process of copyright expiration is currently "frozen" in the US.