Public Domain Day outside the USA: what Canada and the rest of the world get today / Boing Boing

"In the USA, laws passed in 1976 and 1998 ensure that virtually nothing ever enters the public domain, but it's a different story in the rest of the world -- for now, at least. In Canada, copyright endures for 50 years after the author's death, so this year, Canada is getting a bumper-crop of public domain works, including the works of TS Eliot, Winston Churchill, Nat King Cole, Malcolm X, Edward R Murrow, Spike Jones, Sonny Boy Williamson, Shirley Jackson, Albert Schweitzer, Fred Quimby and Somerset Maugham. But Canada is on the verge of signing the Trans Pacific Partnership, which forces all 12 countries to sink to the level of the American program. If Canada signs on, this'll be the last year that Canada gets any new public domain works, until 2036. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is getting its own New Year's present for the public domain, while the Americans continue to wall themselves off from the freedom to make new works by interpreting old ones, to do deep scholarly research, to adapt works to assistive formats for disabled people, and to produce cheaper editions that can find their way into the hands of the record numbers of Americans living in poverty ..."