Last January 1 was the Day of the Public domain, that is, the Copyright of many writers they are free. We remember that Copyright, In legal terminology, they are the creators' rights over their works literary and artistic. These range from books, music, painting, sculpture, and movies to computer programs, databases, advertisements, maps, and technical drawings. This year there are several names that enter this list.

Copyright

When a work becomes of public domain, your economic rights expire and you can use it freely. Nevertheless, moral rights are maintained. These are those pertaining to the recognition of authorship. They preserve their integrity so that no modifications or other derivative works are made.

Each country has different legislation on Copyright. In Spain, the Intellectual Property Law of 1987 was maintained until 1879. The term set is eighty years "from January 1 of the year following the death or declaration of death." This point is somewhat controversial, especially for the cases of writers killed during the Civil War. For example, Federico García Lorca was in 1936, but his death was not officially registered until 1940.

Writers entering the public domain

With the current law of 1987 (although it is short-lived now), that term was equated with those of the rest of the countries and was set at seventy years instead of eighty. So since January 1 of this year there is a new series of writers entering the public domain.

Among them are the aforementioned Lorca, Ramiro de Maeztu, Ramón María del Valle-Inclán, Pedro Muñoz Seca or Miguel de Unamuno, all died in 1936. The National Library posted a long list with others 374 names. It has also digitized a good part of the work of these authors and they are publicly available on its website.

That about Spanish writers. Among international authors, names such as the writer and poet stand out G, the writer, poet and essayist André Breton, the German playwright and novelist Gerhart Hauptmann, today forgotten winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1912; and the British novelist and historian HG Wells, Author of The time Machine o War of the Worlds.