New works entering the public domain again this year.

[conuly]

Hurrah!

Now, if only we could retroactively reduce the copyright term. 75 years is still ridiculous.

Comments

[all_strange_wonders]

It's actually the life of the author + 70 years for works created after 1978. It's a bit more complicated for works originally copyrighted before that time, but suffice it to say that your friend and his heirs will continue to hold copyright on any currently copyrighted material for some time, especially since copyright renewal has been automatic since 1992.

In fact, if you check out the (obviously deeply incomplete) wikipedia article on works entering the public domain in 2020, you'll see that works entering the public domain this year are by authors who died around the time your friend probably started publishing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_in_public_domain.