I recently came accross a beautiful typography book from the 1920’s at an auction. It was suggested that I scan all the pages in and make them available on my website for download. I thought it was a great idea and thought about making either an ebook available for download for a few bucks or making money off of ads on the pages (both to recoup the massive amount of bandwith that would be used.)
What are the lagalities when dealing with this sort of matter? When does a book actually go out of copywrite and when it becomes public domain, in what ways are you able to duplicate it and make money?
Copyright is 50 years in Canada, 90 in the USA, 75 in the European Union. (From date of death of author, or if work for hire, then from date of publication.)
When the EU extended its copyright period, everything in the public domain that was less than 75 years old went BACK into copyright. In the USA that didn’t happen, so if what you want to reproduce was out of copyright in 1998 it’s still in the public domain.