OT: Number of days left until January 1, 2019

For those who do not know what it is, OT means "Off-Topic", thanks to the forum member who was kind to tell me again what it means even though I was with Internet for a long time.

Those forum members who are not interested in reading the bottom portion of my posts to this forum or do not care about it are advised to delete this post. Some blank lines are inserted to help them resist the temptation. :-)

I am sending this message a little earlier because I am not sure if I will be around to post this message on Friday. On April 23, 2005 this Saturday, there will be

      5 , 0 0 0 days

(five thousand days) left before the earliest works that are copyrighted and published in the U.S. in the year of 1923 and that are renewed around the year of 1951 are returned to the public domain on January 1, 2019. There are about 2,691 works of them.

I am posting this message merely because the number of days left is now in term of thousands. There is nothing mystery about it; it is like commuters who become excited when the mileage on their cars turns to 100,000, 200,000 or even 300,000 or it is like mortgagors who become excited when the balance of their mortgages goes below the $50,000, $25,000, or $10,000 mark. It is psychological thing that I don't know what it is called.

It is a pure coincidence that on April 23, 2005 begins the day of Passover at sunset or it is the day of Passover, depending on practice of different religious groups. Passover sometimes is the symbol of freedom, in the same way as the public domain that is the symbol of freedom in knowledge.

Still counting down :-),

Joseph Pietro Riolo
<riolo[_at_]voicenet.com>

Number of days left until 1-1-2019 when all knowledge of 1923 in the land of the U.S.A. will be freed from their copyright owners' prisons: 5,006

Public domain notice: I put all of my expressions in this post in the public domain. Received on Tue Apr 19 2005 - 00:05:55 GMT