Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
The US is a Berne signatory  . |
The US Congress passed a law, in 1988, saying that, but subsequent legislation didn't fully follow what our signature pledged.
For example, in fifteen months, books published in 1923 come into the US public domain, even if Berne says otherwise. One example is
The Murder on the Links, by Agatha Christie. According to the
detailed precis of US copyright law here, the fact that Agatha Christie will only have been deceased for 43 years, while Berne has a Death + 50 clause, will make no difference.
Googling this issue a bit,
it sounds like Britain will be able to successfully sue the US, in the World Trade Organization, if
The Murder on the Links is openly put on US web sites without payment to the copyright owner, and the US government does nothing to stop it. We'll see if that happens, but I doubt it will.
P.S. Several posters previously predicted that US law will change to block our planned January 1, 2019 public domain day. I doubt that also, but, again, we'll see.
P.P.S. I apologize to the writers of Writers' Corner for having slightly hijacked the thread in a reader-focused direction.