Peter Hirtle, When is it in the public domain?

"[Are the] Nuremburg Trial transcripts...in the public domain[?]... The bottom line is that, as in this case, it is often very difficult to establish with certainty what is the copyright status of a particular work. Uncertainty over the copyright status has not stopped numerous publishers from reprinting the works, however, nor has it stopped the Library of Congress from digitizing and making available all 42 volumes in the Official Series. We often want legal certainty when we think about digitization projects. What we should be asking instead is whether what we want to do useful, and how likely it is that anyone would object."