Copyright watch

This may seem a little morbid, but I've taken to checking the years in which famous chessplayers died. Not because I delight in such things, but to track the copyright status of anything they may have written. These days the standard is that copyright lasts for 70 years after the death of the author (it used to be 50 years). There is some grey area based on the change from 50 to 70, but I think 70 is a safe bet.
As the copyright period extends up until the end of the calendar year (not to the actual date of death), any works by an author who died in 1941 or earlier are now in the public domain. The most significant player who died in 1941 was Emmanuel Lasker. However he didn't write a lot of books so I don't expect a deluge of reprints of his works. Next year Capablanca's writings enter the public domain, but he wrote even less than Lasker, so no gold mine there either.
My main interest in public domain chess books is not being driven by any budgetary constraints, but by the hope that more content becomes available for electronic platforms. I think it would provide a nice entry point into the world of chess literature if a number of classic books could be downloaded and read on portable devices.
(btw this is my ever first blog post made using a tablet device with a half eaten apple stamped on the back)