Copyrights Lapse. What Next? ‘The Prophet and the Zombie’?

The article examines the implications of the copyright lapse under a 1998 U.S. law that will be implemented starting January 1, 2019 on publishers, literary estates, and readers. Topics covered include a brief background of the law that extended copyright protections by 20 years and publishers' concerns about the proliferation of unreliable editions. Several books and literary works whose copyright will lapse in 2019 are also cited.