Flowchart: is this work in the public domain?

By Cory Doctorow at 11:50 pm Tuesday, Aug 23

This flowchart from the law firm of Bromberg & Sunstein LLP is a way of determining whether any given work is in the public domain in the USA, and if not, when it will enter the public domain. I have seen engineering flowcharts for nuclear reactors that were less complicated. The next time someone from the entertainment industry says "we need to educate 'consumers' about copyright" ask them what proportion of their own execs would be prepared to parse this (I recently heard an entertainment exec assert that "nothing is in the public domain unless everyone who worked on it, all the cameramen and such, have been dead for 100 years, and then if the work is rereleased it goes back into copyright"). Link (via EFF Mini Links)