Re: [GBW] question on title

[Sid Huttner <sid-huttner@xxxxxxxxx>]

At 11:01 AM 12/13/2002 -0500, Maria Pisano wrote:

> As an aside: a while back there was
> a discussion of copyright on the list.For this poem I needed to find out
> about this issue and I contacted the original publisher. Here is his
> information.
>
> "FYI: The copyright law is that books published pre 1923 are in the
> public domain. Books published between the years of 1923 and 1978 enjoy a
> copyright protection of 95 years from first publication. and books
> published after 1978 enjoy copyright protection of life of the author
> plus 70 years."

I'm sure the publisher in question believes what he writes, and it is not
entirely wrong; but it is a considerable simplification of what our
legislators have saddled us with by passing into law a succession of
copyright acts and numerous amendments thereto.  For authoritative
information on what categories of authored material are in copyright for
what periods of time, I again recommend the Gasaway
(http://www.unc.edu/~unclng/public-d.htm)
and Hirtle
(http://cidc.library.cornell.edu/copyright/)
charts.

The rules for other formats (e.g., photographs and motion pictures, sound
recordings, film, television and theater scripts, etc.) may (and I
believe do) vary somewhat, and I don't know of similarly authoritative
summaries for them.

Cordially ....................  Sid Huttner, University of
Iowa

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