NEWS 409 Lecture 20: New Life for Old Classics
26 Feb 2019
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New life for old classics, as their copyright runs out reading notes. Until now, the publishing house that still bears knopf"s name has held the north american copyright on the title. But that will change on jan. 1, when the prophet enters the public domain, along with works by thousands of other artists and writers, including marcel proust, Willa cather, d. h. lawrence, agatha christie, joseph conrad, edith wharton, p. g. wodehouse, Rudyard kipling, katherine mansfield, robert frost and wallace stevens. Books are going to be available in a much wider variety now, and they"re going to be cheaper. The sudden deluge of available works traces back to legislation congress passed in 1998, which extended copyright protections by 20 years. The law reset the copyright term for works published from 1923 to 1977 lengthening it from 75 years to 95 years after publication essentially freezing their protected status.
