That time again!

p2pnet.net, Canada
Jan 3 2005

That time again!

p2pnet.net Opinion:- That time again!

Once again the year rolls over, and a whole raft of old works fall
into the public domain as their copyrights expire. Our collective
past intellectual output moves from being “property” to being
history, culture, and heritage.

Last year on this day, millions of pages of archival documents, whose
authors had died before 1949, became public domain in Canada. This
was the result of long-overdue amendments to the Copyright Act in
1998, which ended the perpetual copyright in unpublished `works.’

Unfortunately, there will not be another archival Public Domain Day
for archivists, historians, genealogists, and others, to celebrate in
Canada until January 1, 2049. This is because the 1998 amendments
also provided that the `works’, including historical documents, by
`authors’ who died between 1949 and 1998 inclusive, would have a
copyright term fixed neither to the life of the author nor the
creation of the work, but to the coming-into-force of the amendment.
Those unpublished literary works – the raw material of history –
whose authors died between 1949 and 1998, will not be public domain
for nearly another half-century. This, even though the published
material by those same people will continue to become public domain.

For example, the unpublished letters of William Lyon Mackenzie King
(d. 1950) will be `protected’ by copyright until 2049. However, his
published works became public domain four years ago today.

Similarly, a pamphlet by Agnes MacPhail (d. 1954), Convict or
citizen? : the urgent need for prison reform, is in the public domain
as of today. But her letters on this, or any subject, are not, and
won’t be for 45 years.

Isaac Pedlow’s One hundred years of Presbyterianism in Renfrew
County, published in 1930, is, as of this morning, in the public
domain. His letters to Prime Minister Meighen, on the subject of
railways, from the early 1920s, are not, and won’t be for 45 years.

Herbert Brown Ames’ The city below the hill: a sociological study of
a portion of the city of Montreal, published in 1897, is, since you
kissed your sweetie at midnight, in the public domain. But his 1902
letter to Sir Wilfrid Laurier, concerning a proposed subway for the
city of Montreal, is not, and won’t be for 45 years.

You get the picture.

But on to better news! There is, after all, still a Public Domain Day
to celebrate in respect of published works. Are you wearing your
party hats? (New Years Eve paraphernalia may be recycled.)

In the life+50 copyright universe, which comprises most of the
world’s countries, and the majority of the world’s people, including
Canada, we will see the entry into the public domain of the published
works of Soviet historian Robert Vipper; Swiss Jungian psychologist
Ernst Aeppli; British Columbia author and educator Alice Ravenhill;
historian Ferdinand Schevill; Dutch composer Henri Zagwijn; French
musician and composer Léonce de Saint-Martin; Danish novellist Martin
Andersen Nexø; American botanist Albert Francis Blakeslee; German
ethnologist, philologist and historian Wilhelm Schmidt; Canadian
economist Édouard Montpetit; American novellist and poet Elsa Barker;
Danish poet and writer Martin Anderson Nex; American evangelist Frank
Grenville Beardsley; Uruguayan poet Julio J. Casal; Bishop of Oxford
Kenneth Escott Kirk; “western” writer William MacLeod Raine; American
anthropologist Earnest Albert Hooton; Mexican artist Frida Kahlo;
German historian Otto Scheel; American poet Walter Arensberg; Flemish
artist Edgar Tytgat; British mathematician Alan Turing; physicist
Enrico Fermi; French composer Jean Roger-Ducasse; American author
(“Bobbsey Twins”) Lilian Garis; Finnish writer and diplomat Hjalmar
Johan Fredrik Procopé; Serbian philosopher Branislav Petronijevic;
French historian and philosopher Henri Berr; American literary
scholar Raymond Dexter Havens; German composer Hermann W S
Waltershausen; “crank economist” E.C. Riegel; Canadian essayist and
editor of Saturday Night B. K. Sandwell; Swedist novelist and
playwright Stig Dagerman; American writer and social reformer Vida
Dutton Scudder; Spanish poet and dramatist Jacinto Benavente;
Canadian poet, novelist and historian William Douw Lighthall; German
composer Walter Braunfels; French historian Edouard Dolléans;
American artist and alpinist Belmore Browne; Scottish-American
journalist and founder of Forbes magazine B. C. Forbes; English
novelist and poet Francis Brett Young; Austrian composer Oskar
Straus; American politician and writer Joseph P. Tumulty; American
comic artist George McManus; poet Hans Lodeizen; Canadian novellist
and historian Mabel Burkholder; English liturgical scholar and
historian Francis C. Eeles; Argentinian composer, journalist, and
director Manuel Romero; Montreal philanthropist and captain of
industry Herbert Brown Ames; American musician and writer Ernest F.
Wagner; Indian author Kalki ; Tin Pan Alley composer Arthur Brown;
Brazilian poet and playwright Oswald de Andrade; Canadian composer C.
F. Thiele; English philosopher and scholar Clement Charles Julian
Webb; Canadian politician and Premier of Prince Edward Island J.
Walter Jones; German scholar and theologian Werner Elert; American
botanist David Fairchild; British politician John Allsebrook Simon;
German historian Friedrich Meinecke; American zoologist and
entomologist Herbert Osborn; British theologian Ernest Findlay Scott;
American mathematician Julian Lowell Coolidge; American mathematician
Leonard Eugene Dickson; Swedish novelist, essayist and poet Frans
Gunnar Bengtsson; Russian writer Michail M Prishvin; British
sociologist Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree; American ornithologist Arthur
Cleveland Bent; American author Onoto Watanna; English literary
critic and Shakespearean scholar Sir Edmund Kerchever Chambers;
American urbanologist Frank Backus Williams; British legal scholar
Thomas Baty; composer Peter Van Anrooy; Italian composer and pianist
Franco Alfano; American composer Charles Ives; Soviet-era Russian
author Boris Leontevich Gorbatov; French novelist Colette ; Armenian
poet Arshag Tchobanian; Canadian composer Alfred Lamoureux; French
art historian Émile Mle; Russian ethnographer and linguist Dmitrii
Konstantinovich Zelenin; Flemish historian Floris H.L. Prims; French
photographer Claude Cahun; English clergyman and social critic
William Ralph Inge; American feminist and politician Emmeline
Pethick-Lawrence; Canadian composer Jean-Robert Talbot; American
botanist and horticulturalist Liberty Hyde Bailey; American novelist
and travel writer Alpheus Hyatt Verrill; American novelist Joseph
Hergesheimer; American songwriter J. Rosamond Johnson; art historian
John Kalf; British linguist and lexicographer Ernest Weekley; French
artist Henri Matisse; Czech musician and composer D.C. Vackar;
Australian novelist Miles Franklin; German writer, social scientist,
and women’s rights advocate Gertrud Bäumer; French scientist and
mathematician Théophile Moreux; Swedish writer Gunnar Rudberg;
American theologist Henry Sloane Coffin; German writer and editor
Franz Pfemfert; Swedish oceanographer Walfrid Ekman; British
philatelist Stanley Phillips; American author and editor Bliss Perry;
American sociologist and educator Howard Washington Odum; American
poet and critic Shaemas O’Sheel; Spanish essayist and novelist
Eugenio d’ Ors; Belgian sculptor Victor Rousseau; and Bulgarian
author Nikolai Rainov.

Just to name a few. Phew.

Of interest to Canadians, in the life+70 copyright universe the works
of J.E. Preston-Muddock will enter the public domain. (Except that,
of course, post-1922 Preston-Muddock work will still be under
copyright in the cultural lockdown that persists in the United
States.)

Whothatnow?

The novelist who sometimes wrote under the pseudonym `Dick Donovan’.

Huh?

He also wrote `The Sunless City’, first published exactly a century
ago in 1905.

The hero of which was Flintabattey Flonatin. Whence the name of Flin
Flon, Manitoba.

The dead hand of dead-letter copyright is lifted on the works of
these, and many others, and society can recreate and build on the
legacy they left us.

Short live copyright, and long live the public domain!

Happy Public Domain Day, 2005!

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress