Daniel Kinzler wrote:
In the United States, anonymous or pseudonymous works are protected for 120 years from date of creation--this addresses this issue, and would be a reasonable safety margin. Besides, if someone does come back and say, "WHOA, that's my father's estate, you can't publish it!" we'd what...take it down? 120 years is a very good place to draw the line.
As far as I know, a 120-year-clause does not exist in most european countries -- i could be wrong though.
True - the corresponding term in Europa is 70 years. For example in Germany, anonymous works are protected only for 70 years after publication. But a work is not considered anonymous, is the author identified himself anywhere, at any time. So that clause is almost unusable for Wikipedia, because no one can know, if that particular author maybe signed a copy of this work in fall 1974 that is now in possession of the son-in-law of his former editor.
Henning (User:H-stt)