"Artistic works can now be protected for up to 95 years, a dramatic increase from the 28 years of protection Congress originally allocated for copyrights in 1790." "As of January 1, 1999, the public should have been able to freely copy, distribute, and use any book, software, film clip, or sound recording published in 1923. But under the revised statute, those works now won't enter the public domain until January 1, 2019." http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-337261.html?tag= The renewal is no longer part of copyright law as I understand it. However, works that were published when it was part of the law would have passed into the public domain if not renewed. Many works published after 1923 were not renewed and therefore are not copyright protected. I suspect that is the case for many genealogy related books. The problem is in determining whether or not they were renewed. Mike Goad Check out http://www.cswnet.com/~sbooks/genealogy/ for other genealogy related resources such as copyright issues, DAR Patriot Index lookups, Cousins Cross-reference table and more. At 12:13 AM 9/8/00 -0400, maryann wrote: >Is the copyright term still for the life of the author plus 50 years? > >I was told recently that a copyright can be renewed. Is this true and if >so, how would we know it had been renewed? > >Mary Ann