On 04/02/06, Matt Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/4/06, Michael Snow wikipedia@earthlink.net wrote:
Less than that, or slightly more depending on how you look at it. It was originally 14 years from the time of publication, with a one-time right of renewal for an additional 14.
I always think it's a shame the renewal requirement was dropped in copyright law. It ensured that stuff that nobody cared about enough anymore fell into the public domain quicker. I guess it did make things a lot more complicated, though.
It did, however, mean that even stuff which people did care about slipped through the net, often through no fault of the copyright owner.
You may remember, back in summer 2004, a popular flash cartoon which parodied "This Land Is Your Land". The copyright owners demanded it be pulled, on the grounds that it was first copyrighted in 1956 and renewed in 1984. The legal wrangling which ensued then ran across a copy of it from 1945 (it was first written in 1940) with a copyright notice on the end... meaning that the copyright actually expired in 1973, and wasn't renewed. Ooops.
(Personally, I'm happy it's in the public domain - it's what the author probably wanted! - but it does serve as a good example...)
-- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk