Posted by John Wilson on October 13, 2002 at 03:02:04 from 202.154.130.18 user hugo.
In Reply to: Re: Ed Kiser-thnx for all 12 in ascii posted by Ed Kiser on October 11, 2002 at 17:59:32:
New Zealand still has copyright for 50 years after the author’s death, so if you can wait until the end of 2017 (effectively 2018!) we could put all ARs works on a website here. Europe including Britain now has 70 years,and America has extended the copyright period gradually (as I recall from a previous Tarboard discussion).
Talking of copyright, I understand that America was not a party to international copyright conventions in the 1930s. From Robert Thompson’s listing of editions of AR’s books, SA (published in 1930) was not published by Lippincott in America until 1931. This would have left AR and Cape vulnerable to pirated American editions until 1931.
Apparently Canada was a party to both the Berne (?) and Pan-American Copyright Conventions, so publication there prewar gave copyright protection in both North America and Europe. But the first Canadian editions of AR were the Cape Library editions in the 1960s?
America signed the international copyright conventions c1948? I recall that Thailand and Taiwan were places that published cheap pirated editions of expensive American textbooks in the 1960s.
PS: I suppose publishers help enforce copyright, but the copyright is actually held by the authors or their heirs. And as the authors (author in the neutral gender meaning) of “The Far-Distant Oxus” books were younger, they may still be alive?