Try­ing to dis­cover whether a work of art (book, movie, song, etc.) is cur­rently in the pub­lic domain? The Amer­i­can Library Association’s copy­right slide rule, should help.

[This] sim­ple tool tells you whether or not you need to hunt down a rights owner to use a book, movie, song, or other work in a project. The sur­pris­ing part? Often times, you don’t—not if the work was made before a cer­tain year, and if the author didn’t fol­low through. Quick tip: Feel free to go nuts on any­thing pub­lished before 1923

Out­side the US we have dif­fer­ent laws, natch, though we are sub­ject to these laws if we sam­ple works that have a US copy­right. It would be inter­est­ing to see a UK/EU ver­sion of this.

via Life­hacker