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Why can americans only view pieces that were published before 1923?

why not 1958 or 1938 (50 and 70 years ago)?

1923 seems a little random

and annoying (i want Gershwin!)

Simple - any work published 1923 or later is most likely not public domain in the USA. Works published 1923-1977 are likely to be protected for 95 years from date of publication, thanks to the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act of 1998. That includes the vast majority of Gershwin - which is now PD in Europe (the music as written by the composer, that is). The Gershwin hiers lobbied Congress along with Disney for the extension. Nothing will enter the US public domain until Jan. 1, 2019.

Carolus wrote:Simple - any work published 1923 or later is most likely not public domain in the USA.

It's not quite as simple as that. Works published without copyright notice before 1977 are PD (see Cornell's chart at http://www.copyright.cornell.edu/public_domain/). Works published between 1923 and 1963 may or may not be PD, depending on if the copyright was renewed. I remember reading a study that some 90% of works were not renewed (but I'll betcha all of Gershwin's were). How does one know?

Unfortunately the only way to find out is to do a search at the copyright office in Washington--these records are not available electronically, necessitating an actual visit (or paying someone to to it). In fact works between 1977 and 1989 that were published without notice might also be PD if they were not subsequently registered. There is a lot more PD material available in the US than we generally acknowledge.

Oh, and as to drivemeape's initial question, prior to the enactment of the Sonny Bono CTEA there had been a moving wall of time where things were passing into PD. CTEA put a 20-year moratorium on that moving wall. What did Cher see in him?

Yes, that's a bit of an over-simplification. The big caveat with all of the notice, registration and renewal requirements for works published 1923-1988 has to do with the GATT/TRIPs amendments - which apply only to non-US works. Works first published abroad 1923-1988 could be subject to copyright "restoration." For example, works of the Soviet composers Shostakovich, Kabalevsky, Khachaturian and Prokofiev were once commonly available in reprint editions from Kalmus. Since 1996, nearly all works of these composers have been "restored" to copyright status in the USA.

BTW, we are looking for scans of the music (Class E) volumes for the Catalog of Copyright Entries issued for the years 1923-1950, including any renewals. These would be a great help in determining the status of US published works of that period. Renewals for works published 1951-1963 are available online at the Copyright Office site. (Renewals were automatic starting with works published in 1964.)

Hi Carolus,
Would that explain why Dover stopped publishing works by Prokofiev and Shostakovich? I recall that Dover once published "Four Orchestral Works" by Prokofiev but has since stopped.

If you had legally bought a copy of a then PD Shostakovich, what would happen to the legality of that non-PD score if you owned it now? Could you resell it? Are you infringing?

Yes, those works along with many others were pulled from the Dover cataloge including, to my chagrin, the wonderful Shostakovich preludes & fugues. Works of this nature (that have been pulled) are back under copyright protection in the us, so being that it was published by Dover now has no effect whatsoever on current status.

To answer Yagan's question, Yes it's perfectly legal to re-sell existing Dover or Kalmus copies of scores that have been "restored" to copyright. In fact, one can often find these at very good prices by searching Abebooks and AddAll.com. Schirmer/Hal Leonard, who controls the works in the US, has made a number of these titles rental only - which often means you can't purchase a score for any price.

Is it legal? Obviously owning them is legal because of laws against retroactivity (heh), but selling them?

Even so, illegal or not, I got the P&F for a pretty good price myself off Half.com back in like 2003...so who knows.

(I also bought the Prokofiev 'Four Orchestral Works' back in like 1996, probably right around the time it changed, and had wondered then why it and a couple others seemed to disappear....)

The date 1923 can be explained by the fact that the old law had copyright for 68 years, and the law was enacted in 1991, so 1991-68=1923. Now copyright is 95 years