In article ,
John Smith wrote:

| Well, nice of you to worry about me copying, copyrighted work and suffering
| a penality, but let me worry about that... and MOST technical docs have
| fallen to public domain QUICKLY--especially this stuff which was cutting
| edge technology--when my grandfather was a boy...

How do you define QUICKLY?

I don't doubt that stuff that was written when your grandfather was a
boy has become public domain, but the process is certainly not quick
now.

http://www.unc.edu/~unclng/public-d.htm may be of some assistance.
Right now, things created today fall (involuntarily) into the public
domain in 70 years AT THE MINIMUM, and that may go up if Disney buys
another extension from Congress.

--
Doug McLaren, Mother Earth is not flat!