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