Public Domain Day | January 23, 2017 | The Dark Room | McGill Library digitization team

"This week we are pleased to bring you this fully digitized copy of Evelyn Waugh’s famed 1945 novel Brideshead revisited. We selected this volume for digitization in honour of Public Domain Day, which took place on the first day of this month. In Canada (and a host of other countries) copyright in a published work expires 50 years from the end of the calendar year in which its creator died. As such, on January 1st, 2017, published works by artists, writers and other creators who died in 1966, like Evelyn Waugh, legally entered the public domain. In countries with a “life +70 years” term of copyright, including Australia, Russian and much of the Europe Union, the works of authors who died in 1946 are now in the public domain. The U.S. too, has a “life + 70 years” copyright term, but due to copyright extension legislation, no published works will be entering the public domain on January 1st until at least 2019...."