Nigel Gatherer wrote:
Bob Rogers wrote:I know you're in Scotland, and you might have different copyright laws than we have, especially regarding things from the early part of the last century. There might be an interesting situation whereby I can publish Skinner's works on my website, but you can't look at them....
I keep reading in various sources that anything published before 1922Are you sure that's correct? As I understood it, the copyright last for
is considered in the public domain (at least here in the States)...
75 years after the artist's death,
At the very end of this post is a bit from Circular 15a, located on the Library of Congress website ( http://www.loc.gov/copyright ) -- [...] indicates material removed by me. The second to the last line is the most interesting. For works published prior to 1950, the longest possible copyright in the USA is 95 years (under present law).
You may like to look at the following website, which gives expiration dates in the USA based on when the work was published. It states that anything published before 1923 is public domain.
http://www.unc.edu/~unclng/public-d.htm
The next website has a lot of details on the suit currently in front of the US Supreme Court on the constitutionality of the "Mickey Mouse Protection Act," (Or is that the "Sony Bono Copyright Term Extention Act"?)
http://www.law.asu.edu/HomePages/Karjala/OpposingCopyrightExtension/
How Mickey Mouse relates to copyright:
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/20020305_sprigman.html
Finally, a nifty website on public domain music
http://www.pdinfo.com/default.htm
Bob
/begin quote from _Circular 15a_:
Protection Duration Under the Previous Law
Under the law in effect before 1978, [...]
In either case, the copyright lasted for a first
term of 28 years from the date it was secured. The copyright
was eligible for renewal during the last (28th) year of
the first term. [...]
Effect of the Present Law on Length of Subsisting Copyrights
The old system of computing the duration of protection
was carried over into the 1976 statute with one major
change: the length of the second term is increased to
67 years. Thus, the maximum total term of copyright
[... increased ...] to 95 years (a first term of 28
years plus a renewal term of 67 years).
/end quote
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