A wrong assumption. There is nothing strict about copyright duration. it is a grab bag of confusion:

1. The star Spangled Banner ans well as almost all latin american national hymns, public domain works, are licensed by the performance collectives.

2. Some Renoir sculptures are no longer in the public domain because the works were copyright climed by a Renoir assistant many years after Renoir died.

3. Revisions of public domain music is routinely claimed by music publishers to be in copyright. The revision is so minor you cannot tell the difference, upon hearing the music, between the revised and original versions. On a guitar work, the change could be in the fingering. It is never specified that the copyright claim is for the “arrangement”.

4. Here in Puerto Rico a music publisher claims to own and licenses the music of great composer Juan Morel Campos, who died in 1896. The allegedly fraudulent copyright claim was reported to our Justice Department 18 months ago by a group of mostly musicians. The investigation results are nowhere to be seen.

5. Music score of a work by Mozart, etc. are routinely published with misleading copyright notices on the cover even though the works are in public domain.

The list and the confusion it creates could be never ending.

Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com