And in other countries, it's really unlikely you'll end up in prison or sued for using something that is both 75 years old and already public domain elsewhere in the world.
Works passing into the public domain have very little to do with people actually getting practically slapped around for downloading them. But they have EVERYTHING to do with creating derivative works. If you create a film based on a book that is PD-US but still copyrighted in the EU, you can expect to get sued.
PD terms also affect legal libraries and archive significantly.
I understand Disney has the rights to the Winnie-the-Pooh character and that they still might cause trouble for those who publish text from the books in Europe.