Suppose you wanted to assign Herman Pritchett's The Roosevelt Court (1948) in your class. It's out of print. Can you just pirate copy the whole book? In answering this question, a good place to start is the recently updated Cornell Copyright Duration Chart.
There are a couple of simple rules: (1) works published before 1923 are in the public domain, but (2) works published by Disney are not and never will be. For all other works, see the chart.
Almost no one will make money from an out of print book from 100 years ago. One may not even be able to locate the estate. If the aim is to promote the production of creative value, which term is more likely to? 100 years or 10 years?
Anyone arguing, copyright is property, I refer to the Duke of Norfolk case. Its reasoning supports reasonable limit on the dead hand's interference with modern use. And, a book is far more ephemeral than land.
The aim of these terms is really to generate legal fees for the IP bar, and nothing else.
Posted by: Supremacy Claus | 17 November 2007 at 07:48 PM