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Message: <blockquote data-quote="teitan" data-source="post: 2020193" data-attributes="member: 3457">Well, for the longest time copyrights persisted for 50 years after the authors death, which means that if any of the HPL's copyrights existed that they would have gone PD in the early 80s! In the 90s, Senator Sonny Bono pushed a bill through congress that ruled that any copyrights qould persist for life +75 years. Because the HPL copyrights would have, according to previous laws, long before passed into the PD under the old laws, then the new law (which is the basis that Arkham House continues its arguments) would NOT affect the HPL's copyrights. Basically, using the old law of life +50 and looking at the Bono Act you see, very clearly, that HPL was dead more than 50 years before the law passed. The Bono act became law in 1998, HPL died in 1937 which means that his copyrights would have lapsed in 1987 under the old law(barring anything done before 1923 which would already be in the Public Domain). The Bono act did not protect copyrights retroactively, as in no copyrights could be recovered under the Bono Act so HPL's creative work would have passed into the PD by quite some time, especially the pre 1923 material. The only way to protect this material is through exploitation of trademark laws which is how groups like the Ordo Templi Orientis have maintained their claim on the Equinox and Orriflamme periodicals which had long before ceased publication (Equinox in the 1960s, Orriflamme in the 1940s) but were trademarked in the mid 70s. I learned a lot about copyright law looking into the estate of Aleister Crowley (which, if I had 1,000 dollar in 1993 I could have purchased because that is what was paid for it).As for a reference on the Bono Act: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_Bono_Copyright_Term_Extension_Act" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_Bono_Copyright_Term_Extension_Act</a> is about the best I could dig up on short notice. It very clearly states the key element though, the Bono-CTEA is NOT retroactive.Jason</blockquote>

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