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Originally Posted by HarryT
I'm afraid you're overlooking one extremely important thing, which is that many countries have bilateral intellectual property treaties with other countries which override the rule of the shorter term. Both the UK and Germany, to name but two countries, have copyright agreements with the US which mean that the "rule of the shorter term" does not apply between those countries. A book that is published in the US is still protected by copyright in the UK if it remains under UK copyright even if it's in the US public domain, and vice versa. Such bilateral treaties are specifically permitted by Article 20 of the Berne Convention.
Ie, Createspace are right.
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Harry, I'm a bit confused by the statement in bold because Muckracker referred specifically to a book that was authored by a US citizen and first published in the US, and is subject to the Berne convention.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Muckraker
If an American writer first publishes a book with a US publishing house and that book is in the public domain in the US then the book is also in the public domain of every signatory country of the Berne Convention--which is just about every country other than the US--due to the "rule of the shorter term." This rule states that signatories will consider work to be in their own public domain if the work is public domain in its country of origin. [/url].
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How is then that UK copyright could have relevance if a UK person purchased this book, or ebook, or got it for free, from a US published source, eg Gutenberg?
I think some more explanation of the applicable Treaty may assist.