Brown Jenkin
First Post
Careful there. In North America at least, copyright exists as soon as something is put into a fixed form, even if no copyright notification is attached. Registration is required to pursue legal action, but it can take place after infringement.
Not a lawyer, not legal advice, but this is my understanding on the basis of dealing with copyright issues as a writer/research on the same.
RC
That is true currently. Anything before 1923 is in public domain as all time limits have expired. However anything published from 1923-1963 had to be registered and periodically renewed. If it was not registered in the first place or properly renewed it passed into public domain (That is how allot of those $1 DVDs of old B movies are available). Then from 1964-1977 works still had to be registered and renewed at least one time. It was in 1978 that the current law was enacted and things were automatically copyrighted and no renewals are necessary.