Hi. Umm no, not really. The author or estate doesn't earn royalties on
out of print books. I would guess that 80-90% of books go out of print,
especially after 95-120 years from the author's death. This is exactly
what I'm so upset about. Publishers have convinced you and most other
people that yes, we really do need longer and longer copyright terms, even
though the author doesn't get a penny for his work. This is even more true
if the publisher holds the rights. At least if the author holds the rights
as most do nowadays, they can pass it on to their estate and the estate can
get it reprinted by a different publisher. However, in most cases none of
that happens.
It used to be that the standard copyright term in the US was 14 years and
could be extended another 14 years. In the 1970's, both were changed to 28
years. Now, it is a flat life plus 70 years for living authors and 95-120
years for dead authors and books published after 1922 in which the
copyright was not renewed. Actually, from 1949 on, the copyright doesn't
need to be renewed because I think that falls into the 120 year
category. From 1923-1949, it gets complicated because if the copyright was
not renewed in that time, it is public domain but if it was I think it gets
95 years protection. Yes, this is very confusing and convoluted. You can
go to the PG site and read the FAQs to get more of an overview on this, or
there are more detailed books etc. Just for completeness, all books
published in 1922 or earlier are now public domain, so no one has any
rights or ownership of them. I can do anything I want with a public domain
work. Note that the above only applies to written works. It does not
apply to sound recordings. Also it is not the same as trademarks. You
can't copyright a word but you can trademark it. Trademarks fall under a
completely different set of laws. For those who don't know, the PG site is:
http://www.gutenberg.org/
Yes, I agree that it doesn't seem right to have different lengths of time before books et al are in public domain. But longer periods undercopyright protect the author and the author's estate. I think the reason for longer ones is because, at least in the U.S., the copyrights can be extended once or twice -- I don't remember (and didn't check -- sorry, Tony, I'll leave that for you, smile). This allows the author and his/her estate to continue to earn money from his/her creative work.
