A question about public domain dates

[ASharma]

I apologize for my naïveté, but I had a question about US copyright law for titles that are not from gutenberg.org. I believe that books published before 1927 are in the public domain, as are books by authors who have been dead for more than 70 years. But I wasn't sure about books published at a later date (e.g. in the 1930s) where the author has been dead for more than 70 years? Does the time since death take priority?

Sorry if it's a silly question, but I wanted to make sure I wasn't misinterpreting US criteria before submitting a new project.

Thanks in advance.

Atul

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Atul Sharma
Winnipeg, Canada

[redrun]

Moving this over to the Help forum.

As for your question, it's not silly at all! US copyright law changed "relatively recently," so the version that applies to works old enough to matter to us is the "old" one, based purely on publication date.

Everything published in 1928 or before is definitely expired under this system: 1928 + 95 years of protection = 2023, the last year they could have copyright protection, even if they filed an extension.
You'll certainly see newer books here, but only if the author or publisher did not file an extension. It's a bit of a process to prove that with any certainty, but Gutenberg US (gutenberg.org) is trustworthy for that.

[annise]

Post the link to the etext in this thread .
As far as I am aware in USA law copyright is held by the publisher in many cases - so a publisher can hold the rights for a book written many years before. But no laws are straight forward - there are always exceptions in some cases. So if you have doubts post a text link before spending time on setting it up.
(And it doesn't take the date of death into account at all)

Anne

[TriciaG]

Here's a flowchart I use (PNG file, inside a ZIP): https://librivox.org/uploads/triciag/copyright-flowchart.zip

Change the date in the first box to 1928 for this year. It's an older flowchart.

Bottom line for us:

1. If it's published more than 95 calendar years ago (for 2024: in or before 1928): PD in the USA and OK to record

2. Published after 1928, AND
--Marked as PD in the USA on Project Gutenberg, or
--Full view at HathiTrust
then PD in the USA and OK to record

3. PD in your country (for Canada: author died in 1971 or earlier): IF either (1) or (2) are true (it's OK for LibriVox), then these are also OK for you personally to record.