From: Rick Prelinger (email suppressed)
Date: Fri Feb 15 2008 - 17:12:41 PST
I believe the 1992 law that abolished the need to renew copyrights and extended all post-1963 copyrights to either life plus 50 (for works by individual authors) or 75 years (for works for hire) also abolished the registration requirement for post-1963 works. If a US work 1963 and later bears a copyright notice in proper form, it's under copyright in the US, regardless of whether the claim was registered.
With the Internet Archive, we sued to overturn the law abolishing renewal formalities, and lost. Five weeks ago the Supreme Court decliined to review the lower courts' decisions.
Rick
Rick Prelinger
Prelinger Library & Archives, San Francisco
Board President, Internet Archive
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