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January 17, 2007

Change of plans

I haven't post much about MidWinter ... unfortunately, I won't be able to attend. A member of my family is having relatively minor surgery, but I need to be there instead of Seattle. I hope everyone has a good time ... post lots.

January 02, 2007

Canada's Public Domain Day

Canada celebrated Public Domain Day on Jan. 1st.

Among the creators whose sole-author works are now available without copyright in Canada are:

... H.L. Mencken, American journalist and author ... Bertolt Brecht, German playwright and poet ... Tommy Dorsey, American musician ... A. A. Milne, English author (”Winnie the Pooh”) ... Jackson Pollock, American painter; ...

Most countries, and most inhabitants of this planet, are in the standard Berne copyright universe of life+50. However, this is also Public Domain Day in the quarter or so of the world where the copyright term has foolishly been extended to life+70.

In the life+70 universe, today marks the entry into the public domain of published works of sole or last-surviving authorship by ... English author G. K. Chesterton... English scholar and poet A.E. Housman ... British author Rudyard Kipling ... Russian author Maxim Gorky ... Spanish poet and dramatist Federico García Lorca ... Norwegian-American author and diplomat Rasmus B. Anderson.

Except the U.S. Unpublished works "by those listed above who died in 1936, and for all other unpublished works by any other member of the 'Class of ‘36'" are now in the public domain, but no published works have passed over in the U.S. for a while. It's something, but not enough ...