when copies of the first authorized edition were placed on sale, sold, or publicly distributed by the proprietor of the copyright or under his authority." Such date is included in the application for registry at the Copyright Office, and on the same day twenty-eight years or fifty-six years thereafter the copyright ends. A provision for terminating copyrights at the end of the calendar year of expiration was included in the early drafts of the code, but was not included in the law as enacted.
Serial
publicationIn the case of works published and copyrighted as serials, as a novel published in parts in a monthly magazine, the copyright runs technically from the first publication of each part; and at the end of the twenty-eight or fifty-six years, each part could be successively published at monthly intervals free from copyright. Practically, however, such a copyrighted serial could not be published complete until twenty-eight or fifty-six years from the publication of the last part. In usual practice a novel is printed in book form a month or two before its completion as a serial in a magazine, and the date of the copyright on the completed work would then terminate at the end of the twenty-eight or fifty-six years from publica- tion in book form.
Joint
authorshipThe use of the date of publication as the beginning of the copyright term and the specification of twenty- eight years and twenty-eight years for its duration, obviates questions as to anonymous and pseudonymous works, composite works or works of joint au- thorship. The earlier drafts of the bill, providing for a term through and beyond life, made the lifetime of the last surviving author the basis for the term of copyright on works of joint authorship. This method was interestingly applied in the German courts, when it was held as to the opera "Carmen" that Bizet's
