Posting lyrics and scores online is a crime!

[--Pete]

Hi,

Wouldn't that mean that Shakespeare and Mozart would not yet have passed into public domain?

There has to be some cutoff date, otherwise things which are consistently popular will never fall out of copyright, including your Greensleeves example. Maybe a century would be good?

-Jester
[right][snapback]97354[/snapback][/right]

I can't speak to the others, but Shakespeare was definitely 'out of print' for a long time since only seven years after his death were (some) of his plays published. And all things 'theater' were suppressed during the interregnum.

But, I suspect, that all classical literature and music is long since in the public domain by my standard. Out of print does not mean inaccessible. The Dead Sea Scrolls are being studied by scholars to this day, yet I doubt if they have been "in print" anytime in the past two millennia or thereabouts ;)

So, if Simon and Garfunkel are looking for a song for the background to a movie, and find a canticle on the demands of love in some ancient collection, as long as that canticle hasn't been reprinted in a reasonable length of time, it is free for them to use. Of course, when they do use it, it does not give them the rights to Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme -- but it does give them the rights to their particular arrangement.

--Pete