I posted something about this on December 12, to the Book People list: "THE final element of the Australia-US free trade agreement (FTA) has passed through federal parliament. [...] The copyright aspects of the FTA [...] come into force on January 1 [...] The term of protection for copyright material was extended by 20 years." So Australia is now Life+70 -- for those authors who died after 1954. It's my understanding -- and I'll keep adding books until someone tells me otherwise -- that the change to our copyright law is NOT retrospective, so any authors who died before 1955 are still available. Including Margaret Mitchell. Steve Gutenberg9443@aol.com wrote:
In a message dated 1/4/2005 1:17:05 PM Mountain Standard Time, joshua@hutchinson.net writes:
<<I'm confused. Is there a problem with PG-Australia
<<(life+50) or PG-Europe (life+70)?
Josh, the best I can tell right now, Australia is life+50 BUT a law has just been passed, though not to my knowledge ratified or else ratified but not yet going into effect, to put Australia in the same area as the other countries.
Also to the best of my knowledge, other countries have now moved to life+95, and if the US hasn't done so yet it is in the process of doing so.
Even speaking as a writer, guarding my copyrights fiercely because I think that if the publisher and the illustrator are still making money from my creation I also should make money from it, I think life +95 is absurd. Life +25 should be quite adequate for anybody. There are many people in this community who consider even that to be absurd.
If my reply is incorrect, please somebody correct me. Flaming is not necessary. Really.
Anne
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