The most important aspect of these laws is that the material is protected for a specified length of time only and that this length will vary depending on the type of material produced. For example, a book will normally be protected for the lifetime of the author plus 70 years, whereas a sound recording will be protected for 50 years.
So when you are doing research you will probably find a lot of material that is still ‘in copyright’ and some (much older) material that is ‘out of copyright’. What you can copy and how much of it will be directly dependant on whether it is in or out of copyright, and it is sometimes very difficult to determine the status of the material.
Be very careful if you are told that you can use something because it is ‘in the public domain’. In the USA this means that it is ‘out of copyright’ or the rights owner has agreed that it can be used freely by anyone, whereas in the UK it means that something has been published and is openly available, but that it might still be in copyright and therefore you can only copy it under the terms of the law, with permission, or under a licence.
Similarly, just because a book is out of print or you can’t identify the author doesn’t mean that it is out of copyright. The laws apply until the period of copyright ends.
The University of Reading and the Harry Ransom Centre, University of Texas at Austin, have cooperated to assist researchers in finding out whether material is in or out of copyright and giving advice on locating rights holders
The Watch database is a searchable facility:
For information on tracing UK Copyright holders, see:
http://tyler.hrc.utexas.edu/uk.cfm
For US Copyright holders, see: