On Friday 17 October, Alison Pinsler <alisonp[_at_]fox.com> posted a query about an article and image published in 1865.
In order to have some idea whether copyright still exists, I would make the following extreme assumptions to test the dates.
Author born in 1847.
Author wrote article (1865) at age 18 (people started work earlier then!)
Author lived to be 100 and died in 1947.
Life-plus-50 would extend copyright to 1997 when it would enter the
public domain.
Questions on the assumptions.
What are the chances that the author wrote it at age 18 and not age 28?
What are the chances he lived to 100?
If one or both are slim, then one can be fairly sure that copyright
has expired.
As a non-US person, however, I cannot comment on the term of copyright granted to a creator in 1865; on how this has been amended by subsequent copyright laws; on how earlier rights may have been carried over the transitions in legislation.
But the "life-plus-50" rule should have expired by now.
Ron B. Thomson, Chair
Canadian Copyright Institute
<thomson[_at_]chass.utoronto.ca>
Received on Fri Oct 24 1997 - 13:30:19 GMT
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