Einstein famous, dead, and occasionally out of copyright

Einstein famous, dead, and occasionally out of copyright ››: 2005 is the World Year of Physics, an initiative inspired by the centennial of Einstein's most productive year (more about Einstein). It's also 50 years since his death, another reason to think of him. This second anniversary has an interesting effect: to my non-legal eye, it looks like anything he wrote in his life to which he retained the copyrights will go into the New Zealand public domain at the end of this year according to current law. The same seems to apply to Canada, Korea and many other places still using the Berne Convention as their legal baseline. He won't lose his copyrights in Australia or the EU until 2025 or in the US until 2045, which will please a bunch of people. Other scientists died in 1955 of course, including Alexander Fleming, Oswald Avery, and Teilhard de Chardin, as did notables such as James Dean, Dale Carnegie and Charlie Parker -- so are they going public in NZ soon too? It might get messy next year: A.A.Milne died in 1946.; [Permalink…13-May-05…Deserving memes……Comments (0)]

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