The Public Domain Donut Hole

What is the Domain Freeze? The 1998 “Mickey Mouse” domain extension and U. S. public domain laws extending 35 years of additional public domain coverages of copyrighted works means 2010 is a bum year for exploitable private works coming into the public domain. Life plus seventy years copyright protection is the current copyright coverage by U. S. law.

How does this affect domaining? Sites use names and copyrighted material a lot. Because copyright turf wars could have been made moot without the reforms, 1976′s regulation affects the domaining world today.  But European authors dying in 1939 (plus seventy years) have material arising into the public domain now. Content editors and webmasters, look alive! There is keyword gold in them thar….Alps.