Yesterday marked the turning of the year, and as a consequence, millions of works entered the public domain in Canada and other countries with copyright terms more limited than those in the US.
Today, January 1, 2004, every unpublished document whose author had died on or before December 31, 1948, has passed from copyright into the public domain in Canada…
Also today, the published works of people who had the good sense to die in
1953 have become public domain in Canada and any other country which
retains the life+50 rule for copyright term. These people include Polish
poet Julian Tuwim, British mathematician Alan Turing, Dutch children's
author Hugo Pilon, Russian author and Nobel laureate Ivan Bunin, Soviet
dictator Joseph Stalin, metaphyisical author Baird Spalding, Norwegian
novelist and Nobel laureat Knut Hamsun, playwright and Nobel laureate
Eugene O'Neill (1953 was a bad year for Nobel laureates!), Irish poet and
Yeats' one-time lover Maud Gonne, Welsh poet and playwright Dylan Thomas
(bad year for poets!), country music singer-songwriter Hank Williams,
French author Hilaire Belloc, American historian J.G. Randall, Russian
composer Sergei Prokofiev (bad year for Russians!), founder of Saudi
Arabia Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud, Maria Montessori of school fame, and many more.
