On Sat, Jun 14, 2003 at 05:36:12PM -0500, Jimmie Houchin wrote:
> Unfortunately commerce and laws formed for such aren't as open and 
> friendly as Scientist may like.
> 
> With all the extensions and such added by Congress it is my 
> understanding that any after 1923 can have a copyright period of up to 
> 95 years.
> 
And that's 96 (or 70) years after the death of the author... so essentially
nothing is going to be public domain in our lifetime. 

The effect of this can be seen here: 
http://cabinetmagazine.org/issues/10/publicdomainpostcard.php

If you are an US-citizen, you might want to sign Lawrence Lessings
petition for a better system:

http://www.petitiononline.com/eldred/petition.html

The idea is to require copyright-holders to pay $1 per year 50 years
after the work was published. 

    Marcus


-- 
Marcus Denker marcus at ira.uka.de  -- Squeak! http://squeak.de