Paul Rubin wrote:
"samsloan" writes:
I believe, but I am not certain, that books written more than 50 years
ago have passed into the public domain.

Why do you state that these books, that were written betwen 1947 and
1953, are not in the public domain?

It's much more complicated than that. Basically any book written
after 1923 is likely to be in copyright forever. There was a lawsuit
a few years ago to fix this situation but the Supreme Court screwed it
up, so we're stuck with it now.

Can you cite that case?

What I have been reading indicates that anything written before 1978
(whenj the law was changed) is now in public domain, unless it was
registered with the US Copyright Office and the fees paid, which is
rarely done, and even then the copyright expires after 47 or 50 years
and cannot be renewed further.

There seem to be differences of opinion here. I just reprinted a book
that was written in 1932 and another one that was written in 1937, so I
need to find out what the law exactly is.

Sam Sloan