Next paragraph: "Mondrian died in 1944. Any of his works subject to a life-plus-70 regime would have entered the public domain" 10 years ago. Who even thought of including that in a legal argument??
There's all sorts of quirks for anything published before that rule got standardised more-or-less worldwide, but in general 1930-1945 is still like a legal grey area that can be challenged in court and you should be good to go for anything published before that. And don't get me even started on posthumous publications, that's a whole different can of worms where a family member might claim some contribution (like for example Anne Frank's father), pushing the copyright further to the life of the author + life of that family member + 70.
As a concept it existed in one way or the other pretty much ever since the printing press.
The original treaty, if I am not misunderstanding here: https://www.wipo.int/en/web/treaties/ip/berne/summary_berne includes a "dead + 50 recomended" protection since the 1908 revision, before that it was up to each country laws, and in 1948 it changed to "dead + 50 minimum mandatory". In 1993 it was raised to "dead + 70" in the UE, to be followed by the US with the same extension in 1988 in Sonny Bono Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act.
You're not contradicting anything I'm saying, you're just saying the same thing with more words because you don't understand where my argument comes from. What I don't understand is why you would even want to take credit for such a broken system to begin with.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_St...:
“For works published or registered before 1978, the maximum copyright duration is 95 years from the date of publication, if copyright was renewed during the 28th year following publication. Copyright renewal has been automatic since the Copyright Renewal Act of 1992.
For works created before 1978, but not published or registered before 1978, the standard §302 copyright duration of 70 years from the author's death also applies. Prior to 1978, works had to be published or registered to receive copyright protection. Upon the effective date of the 1976 Copyright Act (which was January 1, 1978) this requirement was removed and these unpublished, unregistered works received protection. However, Congress intended to provide an incentive for these authors to publish their unpublished works. To provide that incentive, these works, if published before 2003, would not have their protection expire before 2048.”
So I wasn't doing a legal analysis of which rule is the correct one, but rather observing how their arguments are ridiculous.