Yes Gardner, you're right. But my understanding is that, at least for some volunteers, one goal is to include as much as possible from PG-us into the PG Canada system. A rule like the one below would facilitate some of that. Given the type of role model some are hoping PG Canada can be as promoter of a vibrant public domain, I'd rather have precise rules for what goes into the collection, rather than just saying "oh, I'm sure this book is ok", as you will see some online sources do. Andrew On Sat, 15 Jan 2005, Gardner Buchanan wrote:
On 21:27:21 Andrew Sly wrote:
5) An item where the author is known, but his date of death cannot be reasonably determined, and the work was published a certain number of years ago. (This would be for mid-nineteenth century and older works, where one can assume that, given a human life-span, the author could not have lived past a date of 50 years ago. I don't know how long ago this number should be.)
If you assume the age at death could have been as high as 100 and the age at publishing as low as 12, you wind up with 1867.
90 years and 20 years gives 1885.
Anything that falls under this rule would be a shoo-in for PG USA, and it would be simplest to just post it there.