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The Public Domain

By Robert Farley

On March 3, 2021

At 5:21 pm

In General

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Not a bad point…

Dr Seuss died thirty years ago.

"And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street," one of the books that the copyright owners are letting go out of print, was published 84 years ago.

There is no good reason these books aren't public domain.— Barry makes comics (@barrydeutsch) March 3, 2021

This inspired me to do a bit of a dive into the copyright status of Mein Kampf, which is still not in the public domain in the United States. Turns out that the US seized the copyright in 1942 and sold it to Houghton Mifflin, its current owner, in 1979; apparently it expires in 2035 for reasons that I struggle to understand. In the European Union the standard is death of author plus 70, meaning that it entered the public domain in 2016, having been owned by the state of Bavaria since Hitler’s death.

And BTW Adolf Hitler does have an Amazon Author Page.