IMSLP Forums

Now that the election is over in the United States, with a big upset of a Republican takeover of the U.S. Government, it looks to be now official that this deal is going to be dead now, because of the opposition by their party over certain provisions in the deal. What this means is that since this will most likely now not pass in the United States, the deal is dead for the pacific countries that are under this deal (all the countries have to agree and ratify the deal that are part of this agreement), and that the copyright extension of Life + 50 to Life + 70 in Canada (they are part of this deal) isn't going to happen either, which means no need to move the files at all to the Asian ones, which is great news for IMSLP! In the end, it was a bad deal all around from the start anyway, way too many things in the deal for a country to accept all at once, it needs to be broken up into smaller deals in order to pass more properly. Doing it through fast track in Congress was not a good thing whatsoever either.

That this or another similar finesse-by-treaty was going to change copyright law in one or more countries was a concern of mine also (I still think it might happen, really; if the reason for relief was Trump's election (!) then surely the constitution of his advisory panel is reason for concern...)

Well he did pull out of the Partnership so this whole debacle is not happening now not anytime soon.

The next thing however our site needs to be watching for now is the US Copyright Reform starting next year (it expires in 2019 so its not far off). We really have to make sure that at all cost that any extension DOES NOT get passed. This is the only chance we have (in this century I believe) otherwise the big wigs like Disney are going to control the fate of Copyright for decades to come. If we manage to stave off a extension to copyright in the USA, then the clock finally starts ticking for works beyond 1923 to enter the Public Domain!

Long clock mind. Either a work published eg 1923 has been renewed or GATT-exc. or somethinged, in which case it is in (c) until 2040 at least iirc in US, or it hasn't- in which case it's out of copyright entirely @ USA.I think?

Unless yet another extension is passed, the 1923 items enter US public domain January 1, 2019 (publication + 95 years) and so on for each year thereafter.