[a_m_kelly]

That's an interesting question. My [minimal] understanding of copyright law suggests that whether the book's in public domain in Britain has no bearing on the rights granted to Americans to use it.

If it is in the public domain in Britain, that doesn't give you a free license to start photocopying the book and reselling it here in the US. Those rights are assigned to a party here in the US. (and thanks to some oddness in the publishing world (or laws that help curb uncompetitive practices, the same company can't own the rights to a work in both the UK and US.)

I don't know enough about this to speculate on your importation and use of a book in the public domain elsewhere. I suspect personal use of the materials is fine. You could likely import a public domain copy of the work from England and as long as you don't adapt, resell, translate or otherwise re-purpose the work you'd be in the clear. I've got a friend who works for a company that does a lot of international rights work in publishing. I'll ask him and post back here, since now I'm curious.

(these sorts of byzantine international arrangements are one of several ways, along with translations, that authors of books have been able to make a reasonable living, selling the rights to the same book several times and being able to quickly drum up a blog post for slow news days with pictures of the Czechoslovakian cover of their most recent book.)

[barrkel]

This "interesting question" is, as I understand it, the basis for the usual ratcheting up of copyright terms. One side says "we must harmonize with the other side", but they go a little further, and then harmonization happens on the other side, and so forth.