Is Mark Twain's 100-year-old+ autobiography covered by copyright?

It might also be worth noting that works published prior to 1923 are in the public domain only in the United States. In Europe, the "life + 70" rule makes no such exemption.

Given this situation, the famous Prelude in C♯ minor by Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) dates from 1892 and technically is still copyrighted in Europe until 2013. At the same time, there is a public domain recording made in 1919 (by the composer himself!) that is available on Wikipedia, where it is presumably legitimate under US copyright law [1].

Meanwhile, various machinations by parties without the best of intentions, coupled with a special case in French law to extend copyright because of the world wars, make it such that Boléro (1928) by Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) still won't enter the public domain until 2015, with royalties sucked up by a "management agency" while the composer's own home falls into disrepair [2].

On the other hand, it looks like Ottorino Respighi's Ancient Airs and Dances No. 3 (1932) would be public domain in Europe while not in the US because of the automatic copyright.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sergei_Rachmaninoff_perfor...

[2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2001/apr/25/arts.highere...

EDIT: Argh, it took me a half dozen tries to get the first URL right. Apostrophes seem to get dropped from URLs HN comments, rather than encoded with %27.

Ultimately it depends upon whether parts of the autobiography were published after 1923. Those parts that were not published after 1923 would be in the public domain. And those that were published after 1980 would be as well (he died in 1910 + 70).

That said, publishers slap copyright notices all the time on works in the public domain. They cover things like the foreward, introduction, cover, etc.

See this complex chart if you'd like, uh, more clarity: http://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm

But this is once again one of those "copyright law is a mess" scenarios.

It's complicated. The unpublished work is certainly in the public domain insofar as copyright is concerned. If the work was edited for publication, those changes might be copyright. The final book is a compendium of materials including the autobiography, front materials, and so forth. The ancillary materials may have a different copyright than the body of the book. If there is only one copy of the unpublished work, even if copyright does not apply, other property rights may. Nothing is ever easy about copyrights.

What can be copyrighted is frequently confused. In particular (Section 102 USC17):

102(a). Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device. Works of authorship include ...

102(b). In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.

On top of this expression/idea dichotomy there is a large body of case law which further explains what is meant.

I've wondered about things like this. I once bought a print from the Getty Museum of a painting by Gerrit Dou (done in the late 1650s), and the Getty had a copyright notice on the back. Obviously anyone can reproduce the original, but is the Getty trying to claim that no one can make reproductions of their reproduction?

Artists should start negotiating for contracts that explicitly contribute their work to public domain after XX years. Shouldn't be that tough for major directors and musicians, after all the CEO's they negotiate with run public companies with quarterly spreadsheets. They will be willing to sell out the 20+ year upside for a point or two on the deal.

Artists gotta start thinking about their legacy.

Interesting bits about prior publication. Apparently this new edition will see more than 50% of the content published for the first time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Twains_Autobiography

It is unfortunate that copyright and patent protections exist in the form they do today. Not only is the span of copyright a complete joke (if things continue as they do now, nothing published after 1940 will ever enter the public domain) but the span of many (if not the majority) of patents is completely unreasonable given the pace of today's innovation.

Example: software patents. For an industry that moves so quickly, the patent protection, which was once supposed to foster innovation by giving the inventor time to bring his invention to market without worrying about it being stolen, is now used mostly to stifle innovation by patent trolls who do not bring anything to market themselves, but just sit in wait so they can sue someone who does.

The marketplace brings about authentic business models that may thrive within it when they make sense, but not forever. People have to move on and old industries must give way to new ones through the action of the market. Just as the luddites futilely tried to hold back progress during the industrial revolution, just as the printed newspapers are fighting to survive in a world increasingly dominated by democratized internet news, so too must the industries -- that once depended on copyright protection -- reinvent themselves. The record companies and publishers of the world must realize that with the new technology, the cost of publishing has gone down to pennies. And therefore, affording copyright protection or any other protection is something that may not be in the best interest of society anymore. Is this done to promote the creation of magnificent works of art (which otherwise presumably no one would undertake) or is it done to cater to the lobbying of a select few (e.g. Disney lobbying Congress to keep extending the copyright protection)? Why don't we draft an alternative proposal that fits the current times and let the people decide?

I have nothing against government protections that make sense. But it seems to me that these days, such long-lived copyrights and patents are doing more harm than good.