INTO THE PUBLIC DOMAIN.

Copyright Watch has posted a list of the authors (including musicians and other creators of art) whose works went out of copyright as of January 1—or rather, two lists, one of for those countries (the majority) where copyright subsists for fifty years after the author’s death (Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Fadeev, Russian novelist; Pio Baroja, Spanish novelist; H.L. Mencken, American journalist and author; Art Tatum, American jazz pianist; Carl Brockelmann, German Semitic scholar; Walter de la Mare, English poet, short story writer, and novelist; A. A. Milne, English author…), and one for “the quarter or so of the world where the copyright term has foolishly been extended to life+70” (German historian and polymath Oswald Spengler; British ghost story writer M. R. James; Italian composer Ottorino Respighi; English author G. K. Chesterton; English scholar and poet A.E. Housman; pioneering American “muckraker” journalist Lincoln Steffens; Russian author Maxim Gorky; Spanish poet and dramatist Federico García Lorca…). As for Canada, unfortunately “there will not be another archival Public Domain Day for archivists, historians, genealogists, and others, to celebrate in Canada until January 1, 2049.” To read about the “short-sighted 1998 amendments to the Copyright Act” there, go to the post. I got this link from Matt of No-sword, whose post adds a list of Japanese authors who are now free for all to use. As CopyrightWatch says, “Short live copyright! Long live the public domain!”

Comments

  1. Woo-hoo! Anybody wants a scanned copy of Brockelmann’s “Grundrisse der vergleichenden Grammatik der Semitischen Sprachen”?

  2. That was my first desideratum.

  3. Louis Mascolo says

    Garci Lorca died in 1936, which would mean that 70 years copyright for all his works have passed and they are public domain. Am I correct? I am especially interested in “the Lament for Ignacio Sanchez”

  4. Don’t know, but going to the site I find:

    Site off-line
    copyrightwatch.ca is currently under construction. We should be back shortly. Thank you for your patience.

    Wonder what happened?

  5. Thanks, I changed the first link accordingly.

  6. Paul’s link now goes to EFF, so I’ve substituted archived links in the post.

  7. John Cowan says

    WP has a series of articles “Year yyyy in public domain”, currently ranging from 2008 to 2022. Just change the date in the URL to get any intermediate year.

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