"Wallace J.McLean" writes:
The benefit, of course, is that once the death date of an author is conclusively determined, then, barring wrinkles like collaborators, translators, co-authors, illustrators, and posthumous publication, all of that author's works are, by definition, cleared.
The catch is, you don't get to bar wrinkles like that. You have to deal with them. By the same rule of thumb, any book printed before 1923 is, by definition, cleared. Go US!
However, since third parties must also rely on the term of copyright rules to determine what they, as third parties, are entitled to do with a work, it would be unfair to the public if they (we) were estopped from using an ancient work simply because no one knew who the author was, to calculate the term, to decide whether the work is public domain or not.
In other words, there has to be special exceptions in the law because it's messier than just printed by date.
I found "Oklahoma, and other poems" in my library. It took 30 seconds to verify that it was in the public domain in the US. It took 20 minutes of searching by library staff to find out that he died in 1951.
Either way, it's easier to look up <1001 -- probably around 750 -- author's death dates (and not get some) than it is to look up 1001 -- no less -- publication dates (and not get some of them, either).
There is a grand total of one book that I've looked into and not been able to definitely pin down a publication date, and that was cleared anyway. I can walk the shelves of my library and check to see whether most books are in the public domain just by opening the cover. I can't do that with a life+years system; in that case, I have to remember when they died.
You complain that a book you have doesn't have a publication date. In my experience, that's a rarity
Not in mine, unfortunately. It's very common with 19th-century English and American imprints, and extremely common with continental ones before WWII.
A American imprint without a date is in the public domain so long as you can prove it was printed before 1989. Go US!
It's not that simple.
I'm assuming, for the sake of argument, that it is. Translators? New editions? Typographical arrangements? I'm blind to them for the purpose of this analysis. Do they have an impact on what PG or anyone else can do with those works? Yes. Do I care? Not for the purpose of this little thought-experiment, no.
Then you're stacking the deck. Anyone can win if they do that.
Honestly, just confirming the death dates for most authors tells you that all of thier works are in the public domain in the US. The exception, works published after their death or still unpublished
Or works published after 1922.
No, most authors died before 1923 and hence anything published after 1922 is in the public domain.
And I don't care to look up TWO data points on many books; I'd rather just look up one data point, and recycle as many of those lookups as I can.
It's easier just to skip the whole thing altogether. If you're doing this for PG, the question shouldn't be what's easier, it should be what's useful to PG, which is US copyright law and publication dates. -- ___________________________________________________________ Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm