Public Domain The copyright monopoly does not last forever. Eventually the copyright passes into the "public domain" and anyone who chooses to do so can make and sell or distribute copies. The United States copyright law which took effect on January 1, 1978, established a single system of statutory protection for all copyrightable works, whether published or unpublished. For works created after January 1, 1978, the law provided a term lasting for the author's life, plus an additional 50 years after the author's death. This was extended to 70 years by the Sonny Bono Term Extension Act, PL 105-298, passed in 1998. For unpublished works that were already in existence on January 1, 1978, the acts generally provided automatic federal copyright protection for the same terms provided for new works. All works in this category were guaranteed at least 45 years of statutory protection, which expired December 31, 2002 for many works that remained unpublished. However, if the work was published between 1978 and 2003, the term was extended by another 45 years, through the end of 2047. This rather complex set of requirements assures that materials that were published in 1922 or earlier are now in the public domain.
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