On 08/21/2015 10:41 AM, Rod Smallwood wrote:
Excellent! EEC (Europe) is 70 years from the death of a known author
or 70 years from publication if the author is unknown
This leads to some interesting situations. Archibald Joyce wrote his
"Autumn Dreams" waltz in 1908 and it has been reported to be the tune
the orchestra was playing as the Titanic sank in 1912 (contrary to
popular belief, it is extremely unlikely that the band played "Nearer My
God to Thee" as they would not have been familiar with the hymn).
As Joyce lived to a ripe old age and died in 1963, the work is still
very much under copyright protection in the UK. However, the same work
was published in 1921 in the USA, so it is public domain there.
On the other hand, George Butterworth, who set A.E. Houseman's "A
Shropshire Lad" to music (1912) was born 12 years after Joyce, but
killed in 1916 at the battle of the Somme, had his copyright protection
expire in 1986.
Laws vary from country to country. George Orwell's "1984" is PD in
Australia, but protected in the UK.
Iran, on the other hand, recognizes no foreign copyright.
As mentioned before, works of Soviet writers and composers were
considered to be PD (unless copyright was obtained outside of the USSR)
by the US during the Cold War--similarly, the USSR did not recognize
foreign copyright. So you could purchase the sheet music of
Shostakovitch for a pittance. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the
US moved to "restore" Soviet copyright and so removed works back into
copyright status. If you want to publish Shostakovitch, you now must
deal with his estate--and copyright will endure to about 2050.
--Chuck
