Mark D Lew wrote:
On Sep 15, 2004, at 7:45 AM, dhbailey wrote:
No, because it varies from country to country. Australia is life-plus-50 while the US and much of Europe is life-plus-70.
Not quite. The United States has switched to the European model of life-plus-70 for anything written today, but for anything written before the law was changed (1978?), the old rule applies. The old rule measured from the date of publication. Due to a recent retroactive extension of that term, in effect anything published before 1923 is public domain in the United States.
The recent "retroactive extension" was provided though the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, and provides that anything that was published under the old laws, had it's term extended. For all intents and purposes, there ill be little new music entering the public domain in the U.S. until about 2018. This will result in some interesting reversals. For example, some of Elgar's works have been in the Public Domain in the U.S. for decades (Example: Opus 2, No. 2, copyright in 1906), but because the UK had a death + fifty year copyright term, the same works were copyright in the UK. Now, since that time, the UK has modified it's copyright terms to conform to the terms of the rest of the EU, so it is now death + 70. Since Elgar died in 1934, all of his ouevre passes into the public domain at the end of this year, in Britain. However, in the U.S., anything by Elgar copyrighted prior to 1923 is in the public domain already, but nothing published between 1923, and 1934 will enter the public domain in the U.S. for about another fifteen years, or so.
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