And a recent post in BookPeople says: I looked at the 1909 Copyright Act, Sections 22 and 23, where it basically says that works in the English language published in a foreign country can get 5 years of interim copyright protection, in which time the copyright can create an authorized edition in the US and get a US copyright. IANAL, but this suggests to me that English language publications published abroad prior to 1918 are all in the public domain in the US because the interim copyright expired no later than 1922, and any copyrights from an authorized US edition obtained in 1917-1922 have lapsed. Is this 5 year provision still in force? To me this would seem to imply that English language books published abroad that have not been published in the US within 5 years would have no US copyright. In particular english language books never published in the US would have no copyright. Am I obviously missing something? Obviously the US Code not the copyright Act is probably the controlling factor. The clause may have been revoked. nwolcott2@post.harvard.edu ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jon Ingram" <jon.ingram@gmail.com> To: "Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion" <gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org> Sent: Friday, September 15, 2006 6:02 PM Subject: Re: [gutvol-d] Copyright to 1909
On 9/15/06, Wallace J.McLean <ag737@freenet.carleton.ca> wrote:
Jon Ingram writes:
The UK law is life+70, for books both before and after 1909.
Is it?
Yes. The move from life+50 to life+70 in the UK was retroactive, and brought 20 years worth of material back into the copy-restricted realm from the public domain.
Note, however, that if a non-UK work becomes public domain in its country of origin, then UK law states that it is also public domain in the UK... a common provision in copyright law in many countries, although not I believe in the USA. I believe this would cover most US-authored works published before 1923.
-- Jon Ingram _______________________________________________ gutvol-d mailing list gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d