We Yanks can read Canadian Wallace J.McLean’s post below from the CNI Copyright list and weep amid the damage done in the States from the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. – David Rothman
Happy Public Domain Day!
Today, January 1, 2004, every unpublished document whose author had died on or before December 31, 1948, has passed from copyright into the public domain in Canada.
As of today, millions of pages of archival heritage, in hundreds of archival institutions, have become the common property of all Canadians.
You are free to make use of this heritage in any way you want, by publishing, digitizing, compiling, translating, adapting, dramatizing, or treating the material in any other way. It’s yours to enjoy and share with whomever, whenever, in whatever way you want [but not in the States].
Also today, the published works of people who had the good sense to die in 1953 have become public domain in Canada and any other country which retains the life+50 rule for copyright term. These people include Polish poet Julian Tuwim, British mathematician Alan Turing, Dutch children’s author Hugo Pilon, Russian author and Nobel laureate Ivan Bunin, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, metaphyisical author Baird Spalding, Norwegian novelist and Nobel laureat Knut Hamsun, playwright and Nobel laureate Eugene O’Neill (1953 was a bad year for Nobel laureates!), Irish poet and Yeats’ one-time lover Maud Gonne, Welsh poet and playwright Dylan Thomas (bad year for poets!), country music singer-songwriter Hank Williams, French author Hilaire Belloc, American historian J.G. Randall, Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev (bad year for Russians!), founder of Saudi Arabia Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud, Maria Montessori of school fame, and many more.
Happy Public Domain Day!
