Here are a few copyright law “facts.”
- All U.S. works PUBLISHED before 1923 are in the public domain.
- Copyright experts estimate that 85% of all U.S. works published between 1923 and 1963 are now in the public domain.
- All facts and ideas are in the public domain.
- There are no official “copyright cops.” However, there are many self-appointed ones who fuss about sharing of materials.
- Material published before 3/1/89 without a valid copyright notice is in the public domain. (There are some exceptions to this, but they are few and far between.)
- A compilation of facts is protected by copyright only to the extent that the selection of the material and the arrangement of the material is ORIGINAL. (A compilation of ALL of the headstone inscriptions for a cemetery does not meet the originality requirement for selection of material.)
more at Copy Right, Copy Sense
Post from one of my abandoned blogs – North Farnham Freeholder – recovered from Internet Archive WayBackMachine 2/28/2011 – page
