Quote:
Originally Posted by pwalker8
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.
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All very true. I was commenting on the claim that copyright laws vary widely by country, which isn't really true - they vary, but not
that much - and that there have been a lot of
recent changes. I don't find 30 years all that recent.