The US law is anything but messy. [...] With the US law, you just take the printed publication date and add 95 years.
Everything before 1923 is in the public domain, which is a little better. The base of US law is simple; everything printed before 1923 or 95 years old is in the public domain. But there are a lot of books in the public domain due to quirks and various rules that are hard to check. There's six or seven different rules you have to apply (for instance, a book published outside the US that was not registered or not renewed in the US that was out of copyright in the home nation in 1998 or whenever the copyright nation signed a copyright agreement (if later), then it's in the public domain.) In that sense, it's very messy. -- ___________________________________________________________ Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm