works into the public domain do not apply to works first published abroad.[1] Another is to focus on books within that subset that were published before 1989, since books published before that date must have complied with U.S. copyright notice requirements (the © on the title page, or similar) to obtain protection.[2] A third is to look at U.S. books only published before 1963. Copyright for U.S. works published before that date must have been renewed with the U.S. Copyright Office to have continued protection. Very few rightsholders filed for renewal.[3] Finally, a most conservative library might focus just on books in their last 20 years of copyright protection—books published before 1943—for which the library is willing to do a reasonable investigation to determine if the book is still commercially available. When Congress extended copyright protection by 20 years in the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act, it granted libraries special rights to use works in that extended term under Section 108(h).[4]
- ↑ See Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States, Cornell University Library Copyright Information Center (updated January 10, 2018), https://copyright.cornell.edu/publicdomain.
- ↑ 17 U.S.C. § 401 (2018); Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988, P.L. 100-568 (1988).
- ↑ Jamie Carlsteon et al., Copyright Renewal of U.S. Books Published in 1932: Re-analyzing Ringer’s Study to Determine a More Accurate Renewal Rate for Books, 79 College & Research Libraries 697 (2018), https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.79.5.697 (studying books published in 1932 and concluded that renewal rates were likely between 26 and 33 percent).
- ↑ 17 U.S.C. § 108(h) (2018); Elizabeth Townsend Gard, Creating a Last Twenty (L20) Collection: Implementing Section 108(h) in Libraries, Archives and Museums (October 2, 2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3049158.
