Help Needed!

Hi Everybody,We're trying to work out how long an author needs to have been dead before their work enters the public domain. On one hand, we've been told by the Arts Law Centre in Sydney that, according to the Australian Copyright Act of 1968, copyright exists in Australia for 50 YEARS after the death of the author or the first date of publication (whichever is the later). Moves to increase this to 70 years to bring us in line with Europe HAVE NOT YET GONE THROUGH!And it looks as though they may not...So, Barrie, Pinero, Maeterlinck, Pirandello and next year Shaw are all inthe public domain.On the other hand, I seem to remember an excellent (but then, aren't they all) editorial by David Crewes in a past Link reporting how the time period had been extended from 70 to 90 years. Consequently, just when he had made it into the public domain, J M Barrie's works were freely denied us for a further 20 years. (JM Barrie died in 1937.)How about Wilde, for instance? Does anyone know if Melville had to pay royalties on ";Ernest";?Is anybody out there? David? Norma? Trevor?JB