I know that for printed material first published between 1923 and (? - 1970, maybe?) in the United States, copyrights still exist if the owner renewed them.
If I’m holding a novel from, say, 1930, how do I determine if it’s still copyrighted, or if it’s entered public domain in the United States?
First place is to go to the US Copyright Office. They have the official records, though only records from 1978 or later are online. If you’re serious about finding out this document outlines the process.
There are certain general rules, though. Anything from 1963 on is under copyright; it fell under the revised law. Anything between 1923 and 1963 would depend on a renewal, which has to be tracked down.
The default is that anything published after 1922* is under copyright because determining otherwise is so incredibly difficult.
You can do a search of the Library of Congress database for renewals but apparently it’s not as complete as one could hope. It’s much better for books than for short works from magazines, e.g. When I edited an anthology many years ago I paid to have a formal search done to see if certain pieces had been renewed; at the time the price was reasonable, about $20 per search. I don’t know if they offer the service today but I’m sure it’s much more expensive if so. I didn’t see prices in a quick perusal of this pdf How to Investigate the Copyright Status of a Work but if you actually need to investigate you should study it religiously.
If the publisher is still in existence you can try contacting their rights department to see if they have information on the copyright holder. I did that and paid the rights fees in several cases. I also wrote directly to writers to get permission from them. The whole thing was a long and tortuous process but nobody ever came back afterward and complained. And the writers I contacted were very pleasant about permissions and charged me a lot less than the publishers did.
I’m sure all the loons will crawl out from under their rocks to proclaim that this somehow proves how awful copyright is, but none of that will be suitable for GQ. I’d be curious myself to hear another valid GQ answer, but I wouldn’t count on it.
*Public domain currently ends on Dec. 31, 1922.
ETA: Ninja’d by Chuck
Their database only includes publications who chose to register, something that’s not required. Several of my books, published in the 2000s, are not included (which is not surprising, considering how lousy my publisher for those books was in all other aspects).
(IANAL) I believe the requirement for registration was dropped in the 20th century. It used to be that failing to register resulted in a public domain work. Nowadays, copyright is established by the very act of putting pen to paper or otherwise recording the work, and registration is only required to be entitled to the statutory damages. If you don’t register, you can only gain actual damages from violators and you might have a more difficult time proving your copyright, but the fact that you didn’t register doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.
The latter part is true, but copyright was never dependent on registration. The statute demanded a copyright insignia - either the word or the symbol © plus the year. Failing to include that did drop you into the public domain. But registration was not required.
Just as an relatively high-profile example, the movie “Night of the Living Dead” (the original zombie movie) is in the public domain because the distributor (accidentally) neglected to include a copyright notice.
Books and movies are entirely different wrt copyright.
And movies don’t have that ‘gotcha’ anymore (although I think it is a paltry 25 year protection unless you renew).
Wasn’t there a movie that was based on a book that technically fell into the public domain because its copyright wasn’t renewed, but the film still can’t be freely distributed because the copyright on the underlying book was renewed?
IIRC, the registration requirement has been out of U.S. law since the late 1980’s.
bup, there’s no difference between movies and books for copyright purposes, except that in a movie, both the script and the cinematic presentation (oh, also the score) are all independently copyrightable (and presumably copyrighted), whereas with a book, all you’ve got is the text. But for protectable material, the basic rights are exactly the same no matter the medium.
From 1909 to 1977 (I may be off by a year or two), the rule for everything was 28 years upon registration, then an additional 28 years if renewed. Now, copyright exists from the moment a work is created, regardless of registration, notice, or anything else, and there’s no renewal required for the C to remain in force through the entire statutory period, currently life of the author plus 70 years. As always, this is an oversimplification.
–Cliffy
Real world solution: don’t use, quote, write about, talk about, or think about anything published from 1923 to 1963 unless it’s highly marketable or very well known. And everybody’s happy! :dubious:
Why in the world would you think this?
Have you tried to contact the publisher? They should have a record of whether the copyright was renewed or not.
You can also try to check if there are newer editions out there (Google Books?). If the book was printed again after 1958 (renewal year), the publisher is certain to know about the copyright.
Because tons of movies are public domain.
I also thought audio recordings were much more stringent, because blues records from the early 1920’s were routinely collected on LP’s/CD’s in Holland to avoid copyright problems.
Guess I’se wrong.
Early 20s stuff is fine. Anything 90+ years old is PD almost everywhere.
The problems start when there is one person left alive who might constitute a market. Then the holder gets to sit on it because there isn’t a market.