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Life plus 20 or 70 years from publication, whichever is longer. If no rights-holder can be found, a request can be made to put it in the public domain and the copyright office should try to find the owner but if they can't, it goes to the public domain. If the rights-holder comes along anyway, they regain the rights, but they don't get anything retroactively.
The author is guaranteed income for life from his work, and if he dies in a few days his heirs get the value out of it for a more than reasonable time period.
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