What you say is in line with what I remember to be the case. But I
haven't checked in a long time. There is also DMCA which criminalizes
the act of circumventing an access control even for PD texts. This only
means one has to be careful about how one obtains the PD texts. One of
the treaties, we should be aware of is the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (
URAA), which allows for the restoration of copyright to some foreign
texts from PD in the US to copyright protected.
http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act
http://copyright.gov/circs/circ38b.pdf
Jerry
On 1/22/2016 11:15 AM, Kahunapule Michael Johnson wrote:
I can confirm that Jonathan's claim is false. See
http://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm
http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ15a.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries%27_copyright_lengths
etc.
We err on the side of caution, but don't need to react to assertions
made by those without authority who cite incomplete or false
information. The Malayalam Bible is clearly in the Public Domain, as
is EVERYTHING first published before *1923*. (OK, almost everything:
the Crown Letters Patent pertaining to the King James Version of the
Holy Bible and the Book of Common Prayer in the UK don't expire, but
that isn't a real copyright, and has no effect in the USA, unless you
are trying to export printed books to the UK.) In the USA, some works
published as late as 1 March *1989* can be in the Public Domain if
they were not properly marked with a copyright notice and not registered.
Copyright expiration is very complicated due to changes in law over
time, the conditions of each of the laws, the variation in copyright
law between countries, and the international treaties that exist in
most, but not all, countries. One of the more difficult items in
copyright law is the way that it often ties copyright term to the
lifetime of the (last surviving) author(s), unless the copyright owner
is a corporation. That means that sometimes it is necessary to
research when the author(s) died to determine the copyright expiration
date.
Changes in copyright law in the USA and through treaties also many
other nations have effectively paused the steady march of copyrighted
works into the Public Domain until the end of 2018. At that time, all
copyrights that have not already expired for copyrighted works first
published in 1924 will expire. At the end of 2019, all remaining
copyrights for works first published in 1925 will expire. That is,
unless congress annoys us by changing the law again.
If you want competent legal advice, you can hire a lawyer who is an
expert in intellectual property law. If you don't want to pay for
that, at least read what is available from reputable and authoritative
sources online, such as http://www.copyright.gov.
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