Quote:
Originally Posted by lumpynose
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What does this mean with respect to its copyright?
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Absolutely nothing except that the author died too recently for any "life of the creator" trigger to come into effect.
What matters are:
where you are (what governmental jurisdiction & hence what copyright laws are applicable.)
where IA exists and what laws apply to them
who owns or owned the copyright.
If the author owned the copyright when he died then the heirs to his estate own the copyright, or have since sold it. If the copyright had been sold to a publisher at some point, then they or their assigns own it.
The US has a history of excessively complex and changing laws that make determining the copyright status of any work created since 1924 rather difficult to determine. The old 27 years + one renewal had some very strict conditions on the renewal and many works fell into public domain due to failure to renew or renew properly. Sorting out the legal trail can be difficult, leaving some works effectively orphaned since no one knows clearly whether anyone holds the rights and the commercial value is not deemed great enough to warrant the expense of a legal search.