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Originally Posted by taustin
Huh? The Berne Convention dates back to 1886, though the US only formally signed on about a century later. Copyright laws do vary somewhat from country to country, yes, but virtually every country is a signatory now and has been for decades. The degree to which things vary hasn't changed much in 25 years. (And the LotR's debacle had little to do with variations in copyright law and much to do with the publisher, the British one, I think, screwing up.)
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Prior to 1976, the US copyright was 28 years, plus the option of renewal for another 28 years, after it was life plus 50 which was done to conform to the Berne Convention. Most of the major US publishers pre-date that by quite a few years, Random House started in 1927, for example, MacMillan was started in 1843, Harper started in 1833. So the current publishing model predates the changes to the copyright laws by quite a long time and dates back to a time where it literally wasn't possible for the same publisher to publish books world wide.