Quote:
Originally Posted by Billi
Won't his books be in the public domain just from the 22nd or 23rd of February 2012 on when he is exactly dead for 70 years?
|
The public domain rules for Life+ is for creators to have died within the previous qualifying year.
Presumably this to avoid quibbling on exactly when someone died if it's ambiguous as to date/month and make it easy to draw up a list of exactly who's definitely PD and who's not as an open-and-shut case rather than have some sort of revolving door-like scenario where stuff exits copyright at less predictable irregular intervals.
ETA for the US people: Duke University's look at
What Might Have Been had your copyright laws stuck to 28+28 with renewal and not become completely disneyfied.
Perhaps it and their
rather sad version "celebration" of Public Domain Day would make a good primer for educating the newbies on why increasingly indefinite copyright lengths is detrimental to the public good?