As Trotter's question implies, is this just copyrighted works generally; or do the US rules only apply to material copyrighted in the US? It seems bizarre, as discussed, that authors who died in the 70's (e.g. Agatha Christie) can have some of their work fall out of copyright now. But only in the US.

Reading the detail I still don't understand where the 1923 rule came from. This seems to apply irrespective of when the author died. The Copyright Term Extention Act Wiki article refers to the public domain date as if this is forever crawling forward irrespective of individual authors. I'm not really following where this part comes from...

Plus, as discussed, I was looking to see what prominent English language countries are only life+50 years for copyright generally; and Canada is one of them (so is NZ). So everything published in Tolkien's lifetime (H, LotRs, etc) will be public domain in 2024 in those two countries, yes? That's close; only five years away...

I believe NZ *might* be changing because of the CPTPP (but a bunch of the IP provisions were dropped when the US [thankfully] dropped out, so I'm not sure). The public were not allowed to know the contents of the CPTPP in advance, so all a bit vague. The original TPP, which included the US, would have essentially seen US copyright law apply in NZ.

I was thinking about this again: do unpublished letters fall under this 1923 rule too?

This article is interesting and footnote 4 is particularly relevant to discussion of works by Tolkien.

https://law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2019/

Thanks for sharing Deagol, that was an interesting read.

Now I am pondering how "public domain" applies for something under copyright in more than one country. From footnote 4: "Note that the copyright term for older works is different in other countries: in the EU, works from authors who died in 1948 will go into the public domain in 2019 after a life plus 70 year term, and in Canada, works of authors who died in 1968 will enter the public domain after a life plus 50 year term." If something goes into the public domain in Canada after 50 years but is has been less than 70 years for the work in the EU, how is that handled?

There must be some examples of this right now i.e. Canadian public domain but still under copyright in UK. Any big famous authors that anyone can cite that are approaching UK copyright expiry?

Reading that article it's unbelievably annoying that this doesn't qualify that it's referring to US copyright only. Even in the US the assertion that "no published works have entered the public domain since 1998" is nonsense. H. P. Lovecraft died in 1937 & all of his work (aside from his letters) was accepted as falling into public domain on 1st January 2008 i.e. 70 years after his death. Loads of prominent worldwide publishers (e.g. HarperCollins under various imprints) released collected editions of Lovecraft's work in early 2008. Why did any of that happen if what was asserted above is correct?

Edgar Rice Burroughs, George Bernard Shaw and George Orwell all died in 1950.

Therefore all of those guys have been public domain in Canada since 1st January 2001. Anyone ever read anything about their estates challenging (or having to challenge) Canadian publication of their works while they were still in copyright here in the UK?

This University library blog says

It is true that the British journalist/author, George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair), who died in 1950, now has works that are in the public domain; but, they are in the Australian, Canadian, and Chinese public domain – to name just a few. [....] However, this is not true in the United States where the copyright term is the author’s life + 70 years, (unless there has been a copyright renewal on the material). Therefore, it would be illegal if you downloaded Orwell’s works in the United States.

http://blogs.bellevue.edu/library/ind ... national-copyright-terms/

Fun times...

Yeh, but would it be legal for you to buy a Canadian book in the UK for example? Would it be legal for those books to be sold abroad by Canadian booksellers? I've never read anything about this being challenged. What is "public domain" in today's online world?