[LINK] copyright question for you

[Richard Chirgwin]

Also, Gutenberg Australia has some notes specific to the local situation:
http://gutenberg.net.au/submissions.html

> Under Australian copyright law, literary, dramatic, andmusical work 
> published, performed, communicated, or recorded and offered for sale 
> in an author's lifetime are, if the author died in or before 1954, 
> protected for the life of the author plus fifty years from the end of 
> the year of the author's death. Therefore, for a work to be in the 
> "public domain" in Australia, it is only necessary that the author 
> died in or before 1954 and that the work was published (not 
> necessarily in Australia) during her/his lifetime.

This is important: "and offered for sale in an author's lifetime". For 
something that was not published at the time of the author's death, I do 
not know the copyright situation.

RC

On 29/04/12 6:01 PM, sylvano wrote:
> The Gutenberg provides some info to help explore copyright reality...
>
> http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Copyright_How-To
>
> IANAL
> Sylvano
>
> On 29/04/2012, at 5:38 PM, Roger Clarke<Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au>  wrote:
>
>> At 16:25 +1000 29/4/12, Kim Holburn wrote:
>>> I have a strange copyright question for those of you that might
>>> know.  Someone wants to publish writings of someone who died in 1927
>>> with no descendants.  Some of her work was published in 1985 and
>>> some is yet unpublished.
>>> As I understand it, (and IANAL) copyright starts from the moment a
>>> work is published, but it belongs to the author or the author's
>>> descendants.  Does this apply even if the author died so long ago
>>> and what happens if the author had no descendants?
>>> Also this author is Australian and lived in Australia.  Now if her
>>> work is going to be published in the UK how does that change things?
>> I wonder if copyright.com.au offers a ready-reckoner ...
>>
>> IANAL and this simple answer is very probably *wrong* - but may help
>> tempt someone who actually knows what they're talking about to do the
>> sums  (%-|}
>>
>> 1.  Whether there were descendants or not is irrelevant.
>> 2.  Who the ownership vested in is irrelevant.
>> 3.  Death of the author plus 50 years, at that time = 1977 expiry.
>> 4.  Subsequent extension to 70 years not retrospective to that work.
>>
>> So it's open for publication, i.e. 'in the public domain'.
>>
>> -- 
>> Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/
>>
>> Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
>>                     Tel: +61 2 6288 1472, and 6288 6916
>> mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au                http://www.xamax.com.au/
>>
>> Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law               University of NSW
>> Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University
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