From: Sally Morris <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2013 12:15:41 +0100

If only lawyers/legal systems around the world could agree some arbitrary
proxy date for author's death, then systems would be able to work out
copyright expiry from a known datum (author's birth) instead of having to
search for death dates.  A default assumption that death is birth + 70 seems
a bit too low to me.

Sally

Sally Morris
Email:  [log in to unmask]

-----Original Message-----
From: John Wilkin <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2013 21:41:05 -0500

Klaus is essentially right about HathiTrust, and I believe that roughly the
same thing is true for Google.  Per guidance from Michigan's General
Counsel, HathiTrust uses a default value of 140 years for countries that use
"life + 70" for their term of copyright.
If the author's death date is known (and significant resources are going
into determining death dates for some countries), the actual
death date + 70 is used.   Now, or very soon, HathiTrust will be using
120 years for "life + 50" countries; again, an actual death date overrides
this default value.  All of this applies to users outside of the US viewing
works published outside of the United States, and the date used (e.g., 1873)
changes automatically at the turn of the year.


On Mon, Aug 19, 2013 at 5:59 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> From: Klaus Graf <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Sun, 18 Aug 2013 15:44:19 +0200
>
> Google Books is blocking users outside the US since years if they want
> to use books published after 1872 (in 2013). Of course the same
> restrictions apply at Google Play and as I may add at HathiTrust.
>
> Klaus Graf