Gene Green wrote:

Ray,
The PDF idea is a good one for those books and other publications on
which the copyright is expired (is expired the correct term?) but
everything published since sometime in the 1970s could not be
"legally" scanned.

Gene, that is not correct. It is my understanding the Congress granted
protection retroactivily to anything that *might* have been in the last
weeks of protection as of 1977... Which translates to 1921. Given that
less than 4% of all works requested a second 28 year term what that means is
~96% of everything copyrighted in the period between 1921 and 1979 *was* in
(or about to be in) the public domain as of 1977 this retroactive change of
status removed **all of that stuff** from the public and returned it to...
Who knows? But you have to find out who before you make that .pdf. Can
you say "Orphaned Works"? Well, just another fine example of our congress
at work! So FWIW, if you tick off the years since that steaming heap of
"logic" became law, I believe the cutoff date is now up to ~1930-32.

Dave Nelson
P.S. In their "wisdom" congress has also granted this missive copyright
protection for my lifetime plus 70 years. Ain't it great they got all the
real problems solved so they had time to grant automatic protection to this
post?