From: ag737@freenet.carleton.ca

Subject: [CNI-(C)] Public Domain Day 2005

Date: January 3, 2005 1:40:29 PM EST

To: CNI-COPYRIGHT@cni.org

Reply-To: CNI-COPYRIGHT@cni.org

Once again the year rolls over, and a whole raft of old works fall into

the public domain as their copyrights expire. Our collective past

intellectual output moves from being "property" to being history,

culture, and heritage.

Last year on this day, millions of pages of archival documents, whose

authors had died before 1949, became public domain in Canada. This was

the result of long-overdue amendments to the Copyright Act in 1998,

which ended the perpetual copyright in unpublished “works.”

Unfortunately, there will not be another archival Public Domain Day for

archivists, historians, genealogists, and others, to celebrate in

Canada until January 1, 2049. This is because the 1998 amendments also

provided that the “works”, including historical documents, by “authors”

who died between 1949 and 1998 inclusive, would have a copyright term

fixed neither to the life of the author nor the creation of the work,

but to the coming-into-force of the amendment. Those unpublished

literary works – the raw material of history – whose authors died

between 1949 and 1998, will not be public domain for nearly another

half-century. This, even though the published material by those same

people will continue to become public domain.

For example, the unpublished letters of William Lyon Mackenzie King (d.

1950) will be “protected” by copyright until 2049. However, his

published works became public domain four years ago today.

Similarly, a pamphlet by Agnes MacPhail (d. 1954), Convict or

citizen? : the urgent need for prison reform, is in the public domain

as of today. But her letters on this, or any subject, are not, and

won't be for 45 years.

Isaac Pedlow's One hundred years of Presbyterianism in Renfrew County,

published in 1930, is, as of this morning, in the public domain. His

letters to Prime Minister Meighen, on the subject of railways, from the

early 1920s, are not, and won't be for 45 years.

Herbert Brown Ames' The city below the hill: a sociological study of a

portion of the city of Montreal, published in 1897, is, since you

kissed your sweetie at midnight, in the public domain. But his 1902

letter to Sir Wilfrid Laurier, concerning a proposed subway for the

city of Montreal, is not, and won't be for 45 years.

You get the picture.

But on to better news! There is, after all, still a Public Domain Day

to celebrate in respect of published works. Are you wearing your party

hats? (New Years Eve paraphernalia may be recycled.)

In the life+50 copyright universe, which comprises most of the world's

countries and the majority of the world's people, including Canada, we

will see the entry into the public domain of the published works of

Soviet historian Robert Vipper; Swiss Jungian psychologist Ernst

Aeppli; British Columbia author and educator Alice Ravenhill; historian

Ferdinand Schevill; Dutch composer Henri Zagwijn; French musician and

composer Léonce de Saint-Martin; Danish novellist Martin Andersen Nexø;

American botanist Albert Francis Blakeslee; German ethnologist,

philologist and historian Wilhelm Schmidt; Canadian economist Édouard

Montpetit; American novellist and poet Elsa Barker; Danish poet and

writer Martin Anderson Nex; American evangelist Frank Grenville

Beardsley; Uruguayan poet Julio J. Casal; Bishop of Oxford Kenneth

Escott Kirk; "western" writer William MacLeod Raine; American

anthropologist Earnest Albert Hooton; Mexican artist Frida Kahlo;

German historian Otto Scheel; American poet Walter Arensberg; Flemish

artist Edgar Tytgat; British mathematician Alan Turing; physicist

Enrico Fermi; French composer Jean Roger-Ducasse; American author

("Bobbsey Twins") Lilian Garis; Finnish writer and diplomat Hjalmar

Johan Fredrik Procopé; Serbian philosopher Branislav Petronijevic;

French historian and philosopher Henri Berr; American literary scholar

Raymond Dexter Havens; German composer Hermann W S

Waltershausen; "crank economist" E.C. Riegel; Canadian essayist and

editor of Saturday Night B. K. Sandwell; Swedist novelist and

playwright Stig Dagerman; American writer and social reformer Vida

Dutton Scudder; Spanish poet and dramatist Jacinto Benavente; Canadian

poet, novelist and historian William Douw Lighthall; German composer

Walter Braunfels; French historian Edouard Dolléans; American artist

and alpinist Belmore Browne; Scottish-American journalist and founder

of Forbes magazine B. C. Forbes; English novelist and poet Francis

Brett Young; Austrian composer Oskar Straus; American politician and

writer Joseph P. Tumulty; American comic artist George McManus; poet

Hans Lodeizen; Canadian novellist and historian Mabel Burkholder;

English liturgical scholar and historian Francis C. Eeles; Argentinian

composer, journalist, and director Manuel Romero; Montreal

philanthropist and captain of industry Herbert Brown Ames; American

musician and writer Ernest F. Wagner; Indian author Kalki ; Tin Pan

Alley composer Arthur Brown; Brazilian poet and playwright Oswald de

Andrade; Canadian composer C. F. Thiele; English philosopher and

scholar Clement Charles Julian Webb; Canadian politician and Premier of

Prince Edward Island J. Walter Jones; German scholar and theologian

Werner Elert; American botanist David Fairchild; British politician

John Allsebrook Simon; German historian Friedrich Meinecke; American

zoologist and entomologist Herbert Osborn; British theologian Ernest

Findlay Scott; American mathematician Julian Lowell Coolidge; American

mathematician Leonard Eugene Dickson; Swedish novelist, essayist and

poet Frans Gunnar Bengtsson; Russian writer Michail M Prishvin; British

sociologist Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree; American ornithologist Arthur

Cleveland Bent; American author Onoto Watanna; English literary critic

and Shakespearean scholar Sir Edmund Kerchever Chambers; American

urbanologist Frank Backus Williams; British legal scholar Thomas Baty;

composer Peter Van Anrooy; Italian composer and pianist Franco Alfano;

American composer Charles Ives; Soviet-era Russian author Boris

Leontevich Gorbatov; French novelist Colette ; Armenian poet Arshag

Tchobanian; Canadian composer Alfred Lamoureux; French art historian

Émile Mâle; Russian ethnographer and linguist Dmitrii Konstantinovich

Zelenin; Flemish historian Floris H.L. Prims; French photographer

Claude Cahun; English clergyman and social critic William Ralph Inge;

American feminist and politician Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence; Canadian

composer Jean-Robert Talbot; American botanist and horticulturalist

Liberty Hyde Bailey; American novelist and travel writer Alpheus Hyatt

Verrill; American novelist Joseph Hergesheimer; American songwriter J.

Rosamond Johnson; art historian John Kalf; British linguist and

lexicographer Ernest Weekley; French artist Henri Matisse; Czech

musician and composer D.C. Vackar; Australian novelist Miles Franklin;

German writer, social scientist, and women's rights advocate Gertrud

Bäumer; French scientist and mathematician Théophile Moreux; Swedish

writer Gunnar Rudberg; American theologist Henry Sloane Coffin; German

writer and editor Franz Pfemfert; Swedish oceanographer Walfrid Ekman;

British philatelist Stanley Phillips; American author and editor Bliss

Perry; American sociologist and educator Howard Washington Odum;

American poet and critic Shaemas O'Sheel; Spanish essayist and novelist

Eugenio d' Ors; Belgian sculptor Victor Rousseau; and Bulgarian author

Nikolai Rainov.

Just to name a few. Phew.

Of interest to Canadians, in the life+70 copyright universe the works

of J.E. Preston-Muddock will enter the public domain. (Except that, of

course, post-1922 Preston-Muddock work will still be under copyright in

the cultural lockdown that persists in the United States.)

Whothatnow?

The novelist who sometimes wrote under the pseudonym “Dick Donovan”.

Huh?

He also wrote “The Sunless City”, first published exactly a century ago

in 1905.

The hero of which was Flintabattey Flonatin. Whence the name of Flin

Flon, Manitoba.

The dead hand of dead-letter copyright is lifted on the works of these,

and many others, and society can recreate and build on the legacy they

left us.

Short live copyright, and long live the public domain!

Happy Public Domain Day, 2005!

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