Are H P Lovecraft stories public domain in the United States?
In general, works published before 1923 in the United States are public domain, and Lovecraft wrote both before and after that. Copyright law is pretty complicated, however; see this handy chart for more details. Until recently copyright in Australia extended until 50 years after the author’s death, which put Lovecraft’s work in the public domain there. You can find it at Project Gutenberg of Australia. IANAL, and I don’t know whether it’s legal even to read this from the U.S. To complicate things even more, the Wikipedia article on Lovecraft says there are questions about the copyright status of some of Lovecraft’s work. (See the Intellectual Property section.
